The management of Plodine, the largest Croatian company that can be said to be in family ownership, was strengthened this spring with a new member. After preparing for this for ten years in the position of Chairman of the Supervisory Board, Luka Ćurković, one of the two sons of the founder and sole owner of the company Mile Ćurković, joined the management of Plodine. At the same time, Luka’s brother Filip took over the vacant position of Chairman of the Supervisory Board.
Sixty-three-year-old Mile Ćurković has also (for now, it seems, conditionally) determined who will be his successor in the key management position at Plodine with these personnel changes. He appointed his son Luka to the management for a period of five years, just enough time for young Ćurković to prove himself capable of leading the company until he retires. What can also be concluded from these moves is that the owner of Plodine intends for the company to remain in family ownership for at least one more generation and that the main operator in it will still be someone from the Ćurković family.
Mile Ćurković is known as an entrepreneur who extra stubbornly avoids public appearances, so nothing is known in advance about his intentions in business and life. However, when it comes to intentions regarding generational transition, Ćurković is no exception; entrepreneurs who usually do not shy away from journalists also generally do not want to talk about it. They should be understood. Preparing a successor in a family business is an extremely demanding and delicate task for each of them, often the hardest they have to accomplish in life, full of traps and unpredictable life circumstances. And even when there are smart children in the family who see themselves in the family business and are willing to educate themselves and work towards taking over the business from their parents one day, that does not guarantee that it will happen. Another reason why business owners do not want to publicly discuss their successors, which may be the most important, is the public secret that heirs of family businesses are targets for kidnappers, extortionists, and all sorts of criminals, from whom only complete anonymity can protect them.
Therefore, taking this reason into account, in analyzing how successors in the twenty largest Croatian family companies are preparing to take on responsible roles in managing the companies, we focused on information that is publicly available in various registers, or on successors who are already involved in the management or control structures of the companies.
