THEY don't just have to be good, they have to be exceptionally good as there will always be the query - did they make it because of their father. The two boys who are in the business are more aware than anybody just how good they have to be to make it. They have to succeed on ability, knowledge and dedication and whether they have all that is too early to say."
So said Dr Michael Smurfit last January about his sons Tony and Michael jr., who are climbing the management ladder at the Jefferson Smurfit Group. He was speaking just after the appointment of his son Michael as president and chief executive officer of the group's US subsidiary Smurfit Packaging Corporation and Smurfit Paperboard. His eldest son Tony had been appointed deputy chief executive of Smu4t France some months earlier.
Dr Smurfit's comments followed some unease among fund managers that he could be trying to ensure that his sons succeeded him in running the group. But Dr Smurfit insisted that Tony and Michael jr have no guarantees of filling his shoes as group chairman and chief executive when he goes.
This week the group announced that Tony will become chief executive of Smurfit France on November 1st. The 32-year-old takes over an operation with 7,000 employees and annual sales of £1.2 billion. The business is organised in four major divisions - Socar (integrated corrugated boxes), Condat (speciality paper), Lembecel (paper sacks) and Facture (kraft liner) and is operating in a difficult French economic environment. Tony Smurfit has served an apprenticeship as deputy chief executive under the chief operations officer of Smurfit Continental Europe, Mr Pat Barrett.
Tony Smurfit is under no illusions about his future career within the group. "If I do a good job and my face fits I will continue to improve in the company, if not, then I will not move ahead. At the end of the day the shareholders will decide and I will be judged by people like Pat Barrett and Paddy Wright and by my peers. I have got to make a success of France and this has got to be seen internally and externally", he said.
Educated at St Gerard's in Bray and the Jesuit University of Scranton in the US where he took a degree in business management, Mr Smurfit is a hands-on manager. As deputy chief executive of Smurfit France he spends three to four days a week away from headquarters. He travels around the operations.
"Sitting in the office you get no sense of how to take the business forward. You need to get down into the pit to get to know the needs of each plant and its future investment requirements. Within one of our four divisions there are 16 big box plants, 19 smaller plants and seven or eight niche plants. And at the smaller plants the lads really appreciate you going down."
Motivating and directing people is important to Mr Smurfit and he feels this is one of his strengths as a manager. "Management for Continuous Improvement (MFCI) is one of the philosophies of the group and one of my own philosophies. We can control our costs by moving people together in the right direction. My job, any managers job, is to motivate people to bring the company forward. My job is to make sure we have the right people in the right slots at the right time.
After college Mr Smurfit spent time in Japan where he studied the paper industry before he joined the group in 1985. He trained in group operations in Ireland, Britain and the US. In 1987 he was appointed to run the Swain Packaging business and in 1990 he became personal assistant to James Malloy, the president of Jefferson Smurfit Corporation in the US. Mr Malloy was "a very good tutor", he says.
Tony Smurfit then went to Britain as operations director of the group's print and carton division. "The division was ailing and it was subsequently turned around. It was crisis management for a period. We had to restructure. We had seven plants, we had to sell two, close one and invest in the others. It was a great training".
Mr Smurfit has been living in France since January 1995 and is, by his own admission, slowly learning the nuances of the languages. He moved to France to run Smurfit Socar and has been heavily involved in the amalgamation of the group's operations in France following the £684 million acquisition of Cellulose du Pin in 1994 and Les Papeteries du Limousin in 1995.
Mr Smurfit describes his boss Pat Barrett as "a very professional manager, very hard working and a tough driver of a business". Mr Barrett described Mr Smurfit as "an effective manager".
Sources at the group said Tony Smurfit is good at seeing problems and finding innovative solutions. Sources outside the group describe him as an affable man who is good company.
Mr Smurfit says the integration of operations in France has gone very well but he describes the French economy as "tricky" at the moment. He is committed to the business - "I believe in what we are doing and I will continue to do my best", he says.
He accepts that he is something of an unknown quantity among find managers. But he said "I am in operations, not meeting fund managers. I have to know my customers, my people, my factories. I have to do my job."
A keen cricketer at St Gerards, he played rugby until he found that "there were a lot of guys much bigger than me". His main hobby now is breeding racehorses at his farm at Four Noughts in Kildare. "I have about 10 horses at the moment and we breed for racing and selling. We try to make it pay and we have done very well this year. It has its ups and downs, but its a fun business." He also plays golf when he is in Ireland at weekends, but the golf clubs are likely to be idle for the foreseeable future as the young Smurfit consolidates his position as chief executive of Smurfit France.
