Crypto Founder Joins $6 Billion Family Empire in Succession Play

(Bloomberg) — It’s the next generation’s time to rise in the Bellon family’s 58-year-old global catering empire.

The French clan’s Sodexo SA, in the midst of one of its biggest transformations since its creation in 1966 by the late Pierre Bellon, appointed his 31-year-old grandson Laszlo Szabo to the board of spinoff company Pluxee NV, which went public last month. He’s the only one of his generation so far to take on an oversight role within the clan’s constellation of companies, providing a clue into how succession planning is reaching into the family’s third generation.

“We have started training the grandchildren as shareholders through site visits and in strategy,” Sophie Bellon, 62, Sodexo’s chief executive officer, said in an interview. “It’s important that they know the company.”

The Bellon family is worth $6.1 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, and is reshaping its empire since Pierre’s death at 92 in 2022 and Sophie’s elevation to CEO. Unlike some ultra-wealthy dynasties, the French family has so far avoided any public rifts among the heirs. But the Bellons have reached a crucial point in which the generation that has come of age needs to step into more prominent roles if the business is to remain under the family’s operational control.

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Szabo, a co-founder of a blockchain-infrastructure provider, is now one of four family members on the 10-member Pluxee board, along with his mother, uncle and aunt.

Sodexo Stake

The bulk of their fortune is derived from a nearly 43% stake — with 58% voting rights — in Paris-listed Sodexo. That stock’s 7.9% rise since the beginning of February compares with the 9.5% decline of Pluxee, in which they hold a similar stake.

Sodexo’s market capitalization stood at €15.4 billion ($16.7 billion) prior to the spinoff, and both companies combined are now worth about €400 million more than that.

The jury is still out over whether the spinoff will create value over the long term. Still, the move is a sign Sophie Bellon is putting her mark on the company.

Sodexo’s Sum of the Parts |

The family’s ironclad control over both Sodexo and Pluxee through their holding company Bellon SA was reinforced by a 2015 accord between the late founder, his wife Danielle, 84, and their children “to prevent their direct descendants from freely disposing of their Bellon SA shares for 50 years.”

“This allows us to have a long-term strategy without management being under constant pressure,” Sophie said. “Of course we have to be competitive, but there isn’t a strategic change every time there is a new boss.”

The rationale behind breaking up Sodexo, which the founder built over decades through geographic expansion and acquisitions, was to unlock the value of Pluxee, according to the prospectus. The firm estimates the global market for its prepaid cards used to reward employees is potentially worth as much as €1 trillion. Pluxee is the world’s second-largest operator after Edenred, which was spun out of hotelier Accor SA in 2010.

The family’s holding company plans to play an “active” role in Pluxee, providing the executive chair and the chief financial officer, as well as furnishing advisory services, according to the listing document.

Marseille Origins

The family has been closely involved in the catering firm’s operations since Pierre Bellon started a business in his native Marseille providing meals to employees of local companies. It has since expanded to schools, hospitals and prisons, acquired competitors, and moved into facilities management and higher-end catering with Lenotre, which is offering 11-kilogram (24-pound) sculpted chocolate Easter eggs for €950 apiece.

Three of Pierre’s four children started working for Sodexo in the mid-1990s. Sophie, the eldest, landed in the finance department after working in New York in fashion and as a Credit Lyonnais mergers-and-acquisitions banker. Her sister Nathalie, 60, was in the food-service industry before joining the family firm. Brother Francois-Xavier, 58, held different roles at Sodexo before becoming head of the UK and Ireland in 2004. He resigned a few months later for health reasons, and now heads the holding company.

“My father raised us saying ‘There is no mixing up organizational charts and the family tree,’” Sophie Bellon said. “Everyone felt free to do what they wanted to do.”

Yet in 2011 he convened a meeting of the four siblings, telling them he wanted one to succeed him as chairman but that it was up to them to choose which one. After a lengthy process involving a committee of independent directors, Sophie gained the upper hand, finally taking the role in 2016.

The unity wished for by the founder has so far held under Sophie’s leadership. Nathalie heads Sodexo Live!, which caters to airport lounges, stadiums and conferences, and is slated to supply the athletes’ village at the Paris Olympics this summer. Francois-Xavier is chairman of the management board of Bellon SA, while 54-year-old Astrid has left the Sodexo board and is an adviser at the family’s philanthropic Fondation Pierre Bellon.

Tense Relations

The apparent harmony contrasts with some other wealthy families with contentious sibling dynamics such as the Murdochs, on which the HBO series Succession is loosely based. France’s Dassault clan also has a history of tension between third-generation heirs, while John Elkann, the head of Italy’s Agnelli automaking dynasty, is locked in a dispute with his mother.

“I didn’t watch it,” Bellon said of Succession. “I prefer series about hospitals and doctors because that’s outside of my environment.”

With his appointment as a Pluxee director, nephew Laszlo Szabo, who is Nathalie’s son, is bringing an atypical background to the board.

As he tells it, he gravitated to the crypto industry after obtaining a hospitality management degree at Glion in Switzerland and hearing about Bitcoin in a Tokyo nightclub.

Inspired by his business-minded family, he started a tech-recruitment company in Marseille in 2015 and three years later co-founded Kiln, which uses blockchain for staking cryptocurrencies.

“My father’s an entrepreneur and he taught me that you can have bad grades at school but if you create a successful company then it’s going to be all right,” Szabo said in an interview last year with PyratzLabs. “I had very bad grades, but it’s been OK.”

–With assistance from Julien Ponthus and Alexandra Muller.

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