N&Q: Family office/investment group deals; family office high-level appointment; innovation and family businesses

Canadian family office buys chocolate group; high-level appointment at family office

Tricor Pacific Founders Capital, a Canadian family office/private equity group, has bought a mid-sized US business called Totally Chocolate for an undisclosed sum. Tricor specialises in mid-sized food, beverage and consumer packaged goods businesses, according to its website.

Eric Braverman, the former CEO of the Clinton Foundation, has joined Hillspire, the family office of Alphabet Inc. chairman Eric Schmidt and his wife, Wendy. Braverman will oversee the non-investment side of the family office, according to the Silicon Valley Business Journal.

Innovation and family businesses

Innovation and family businesses don’t always go together – or at least that’s a general perception. But a recent article in the Harvard Business Review reckons they do. Academics Nadine Kammerlander and Marc van Essen argue that family businesses are good at innovating. Although many of them may spend less on research and development, for every dollar invested in R&D, they get more innovative output, measured by the number of patents, number of new products, or revenues generated with new products. “The level of innovation is higher in family firms,” say the academics. And they go on and explain why in the article.