Guided by strong ethical family values, GraceKennedy stand the test of time
February 16, 2023
The average lifespan of a company is just over 20 years and that number is expected to keep falling this decade.
To make it past 100 years, a business must be doing many things right.
In 2022, GraceKennedy – launched in Jamaica by Dr. John Grace and William Kennedy as a mercantile, shipping and insurance firm -- celebrated its centenary.
After Kennedy’s fatal heart attack in March 1930, his son – then 21-year-old Luis Fred Kennedy, the eldest of six siblings and a new shareholder in the company -- became a Director and Assistant Manager.
“That was the most traumatic time in my dad’s life,” said his son Fred Kennedy who recently launched a book, ‘Firstborn: The Life of Luis Fred Kennedy 1908-1982’, in Toronto celebrating his father, the family and GraceKennedy’s business legacy. “He graduated from the College of the Holy Cross in Massachusetts at age 19. Not someone who embraced studying, he did things intuitively and instinctively and was brilliant. His aim was to come back and become involved in the family business, but he was entrusted into a leadership role at a very young age. While he was not trained in business, he later told me his Jesuit education was instrumental in his success as an entrepreneur.”
With Luis Kennedy at the helm, GraceKennedy expanded existing businesses and introduced and developed new interests.
“With companies that last 100 years, there is a combination of people who have the bravado to take tremendous risks, but are always guided by very strong ethical family values,” Kennedy said. “For companies that fall under that umbrella, the centre holds strong. Having a global vision of commerce and being able to adapt and reinvent itself in the face of evolving politics and economics were critical to the company’s survival.”
Soon after becoming Director, Luis Kennedy made his first trip outside Jamaica to Montreal to take advantage of the 1920 Canada-West Indian Free Trade Agreement that provided GraceKennedy the opportunity to engage with the Royal Bank of Canada and the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce to expand its maritime business by becoming agents for shipping lines and opening import markets for flour, salt cod and pharmaceuticals.
In early 1939, he and some businesspersons registered the Shipping Association of Jamaica. Six years later at the end of World War II, he spearheaded the establishment of Kingston Wharves on the Port of Kingston that is the birthplace of Jamaica’s modern labour and political movements.
“The finger wharves (they ran perpendicular to the shoreline out into the harbour) in Kingston became congested and some shipping lines complained that the harbour was not deep enough,” said Kennedy. “In establishing Kingston Wharves, we once again see my dad’s vision of working with other like-minded businessmen to form a conglomerate of businesses. That was done at a time when things were very difficult in Jamaica as there was a major unrest on the island a few years earlier. He learnt from that and understood there was a need.”
Just five years after becoming Governing Director and Chairman in 1947, the company grew exponentially. Market shares increased through diversification and acquisition of new companies and capitalizing part of the general reserve for issuance of bonus shares led to asset base growth.
GraceKennedy remained a family company until the late 1960s when Luis Kennedy proposed that it become an open enterprise.
“Up until that time, my grandmother held the company together as the major shareholder,” noted Kennedy who also authored ‘Daddy Sharpe’ and ‘Huareo’. “In the 1950s, the company had all the semblances of a family company where the stock was concentrated within a certain number of individuals who had the majority shares. When my grandmother died, people in family companies tend to have their own needs and they go their own way. My dad understood that the family company was not going to the third generation.”
The late Luis Kennedy
A few days after his 68th birthday in 1976, Luis Kennedy resigned as GraceKennedy Chair because of failing health. Migrating to Canada with his wife the next year, he passed away in 1982 in London, Ontario.
Kennedy said his dad had a profound impact on Jamaica’s political and economic development.
“He ranks among the best that Jamaica has produced,” the former St. George’s College Principal and student pointed out. “He empowered others to succeed, he celebrated success and, with a magnanimous heart, mentored others to realize their own potential. Neither money nor privilege made him who he was. He had little regard for these. He was driven by a deep love of family and by values for which he never made compromises.”
Former Ontario government minister and Grace Foods Canada Director Mary Anne Chambers said the book is meticulously researched and masterfully curated.
“Firstborn’ informs us about GraceKennedy’s rich history not just in terms of its success but, perhaps more importantly, in terms of is roots and its commitment to being an exemplary corporate citizen, all of this long before such practices became popular,” said the retired GraceKennedy Director.
“It also illustrates that the values of integrity, honesty and trust and the now universally espoused environmental, social and governance principle of good business have long been associated with GraceKennedy and are embedded in the company’s DNA. The company that has long been rooted in a deep sense of love and loyalty towards Jamaica has expanded its reach to help satisfy that love and loyalty among members of the Jamaican diaspora and those who desire and embrace similar experiences and efforts.”
Retired GraceKennedy Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Douglas Orane said the ‘intriguingly readable book meticulously weaves together the life of Luis Fred Kennedy, family histories, personal emotions, GraceKennedy’s century long journey and Jamaica’s transition from colony to independent nation’.
“I joined GraceKennedy after Luis Fred Kennedy’s retirement and so I never met him personally,” said Orane. “But I felt his enduring presence through our company’s oral history. ‘Firstborn’ has now given me a vivid three-dimensional view of the man and his times. I am so grateful.”
Fred William Kennedy co-founded GraceKennedy (Photo contributed)
The gross sales from the book will go towards a fund to be set up through GraceKennedy Foundation that Kennedy chairs for a scholarship in Luis Fred Kennedy’s name.
The annual scholarship will be awarded to a Caribbean Maritime University student.
“The majority of my dad’s business career was dedicated to Kingston Wharves and maritime activity,” said Kennedy who spent 27 years with the Toronto District School Board, rising to Principal before his retirement in 2004.
The 486-page book is available through fredwkennedy.com.
