Retirement

At the end of the year I will have enjoyed retirement for seven full years.

I enjoyed professional life, but my last seven years were spent in the wrong group. Early in the nineties, we were planning to buy a major foreign competitor, but our shareholders decided there no longer was a strategic fit between them and us and we got sold to the group we wanted to buy. The fact that a strong world position could be built by one of their most profitable subsidiaries was of no account. Shareholder's prerogative (to make errors ?).

Another, one of the last chances, for building an international Belgian-based group was lost for ever.

The irony is that a Belgian tycoon is now buying a major French competitor - he could have created a real winner 15 years ago, had he so desired. But 15 years ago, that was not his strategy either.

I will not comment on my seven years under "foreign domination" ; honesty requires me to say that we were respected and could continue working with the full confidence of the new bosses. But I never really adapted to the change of regime. I just went along to the best of my professional abilities and knowlegde, but my heart was not in it any more, or, more precisely, went out of it rather soon ...

I hear that since my retirement, things have changed drastically and dramatically for the Belgian and Dutch parts of the group, but that was to be expected. I "jumped ship" just in time; I think.

It will remain one of the black spots in my carreer that we could not win the prize ! I still think that we were the better organisation with the better locations, the best networks and the best people. But bygones are bygones. We lost. No hard feelings. That's business.

I have not given the names of the companies and groups I am referring to. It does not really matter any more. For me, it stopped mattering on January 1 2001 when I officially retired.

In my office I had two copies of Van Gogh. One was hanging over my head. Whenever I see it, my thoughts wander to that time and to my closest collaborators and colleagues, most of whom have been scattered to the winds since then.

Earlier today, I happened upon the painting - hence the reminiscenses and ruminations ...