After 169 years of keeping the business in the family, agricultural commodity giant Louis Dreyfus Company (LDC) is open to selling a large non-controlling stake to an external stakeholder, its chairwoman told Reuters.
Margarita Louis-Dreyfus, who assumed control of the company in 2009, stressed she was in no rush and that an investor would have to strengthen the business.
Last year, the billionaire businesswoman completed consolidating Louis Dreyfus Company Holdings B.V. -- the structure that holds the family’s shares in LDC -- via her Akira family trust which now controls over 96% of the holding firm.
She has spent a decade negotiating costly and acrimonious buyouts of minority family shareholders, while profits at LDC declined in increasingly tough agricultural markets.
