The rags-to-riches philanthropist

The Daily Telegraph/UK
(Filed: 20/02/2005)

The Mormon billionaire who started out selling eggs has floated his
plastics empire, but Jon Huntsman tells Sylvia Pfeifer Mammon will
still help his charitable mission

Jon Huntsman is not a conventional businessman. On the day that the
self-made billionaire took the chemicals business he founded 35 years
ago to the New York stock market, he cashed in shares worth more than
$100m. It wasn’t that he needed the money â~@~S he has no interest
in the fast cars, yachts or Palm Beach mansions that usually excite
the very rich. Huntsman just wanted to fund his charitable foundations.

Huntsman is one of America’s most successful entrepreneurs. His
rags-to-riches tale of a poor Mormon boy who built up a plastics empire
worth $12bn is the embodiment of the American dream. But Huntsman is
also a noted philanthropist.

Aside from his personal donations, the company’s policy has been to
divide every dollar of free cash flow, putting half into the business
and half into good works. To date, Huntsman has given away some $500m,
both from the company and his own resources.

However, earlier this month, that policy ended when the chemicals
group raised $1.5bn through a partial flotation. Now, Huntsman himself
must keep funding his charities, which range from the Huntsman Cancer
Institute (both his parents died of cancer) to helping Armenia.

So why did he decide to take the group public? And what made him
change his previous famous conviction that commodity businesses are
better off being private? The short answer is that the operating
environment has become more difficult.

“My view has changed dramatically . . . The energy uncertainties,
combined with the whole problems with terrorism and uncertainty in the
economic conditions throughout the world make it very difficult for
an individual to cope with the peaks and valleys that could accompany
a business the size of $12bn . . . I feel very strongly that the
best protection to our shareholders, including our family and other
shareholders, is to be a public company where we have access to equity
markets,” he says in an interview from fresh from ringing the opening
bell at the New York Stock Exchange.

“Our profits will [now] go towards paying down debt. We won’t have
the luxury to direct money towards charitable things,” he says. “I’ll
sell my own stock from time to time. . . to help continue to fund my
own charities.”

Talking to Huntsman at any length is like getting a lesson in business,
ethics and family values all at once. His philanthropic zeal dominates
his conversation. Meanwhile, the company’s annual reports are peppered
with mission statements and family photos of his wife, their nine
children and 52 grandchildren.

His one indulgence, he says, is fly fishing. Aside from that, “business
and my faith are in every way as relaxing as most men and women find
things like golf or yachting”. But it is the weekly visits to the
chemotherapy wards in his cancer hospital “to give the patients a
hug and encouragement” that really energise him, he adds.

Cynics may find such apparent saintliness from a billionaire grating,
but Huntsman sees no difficulty in reconciling faith and money.

“It’s very difficult for me to separate my family from my business,
from my faith, from our charitable work,” he says. “It’s all rolled
into one package.”

The one thing he does preach is that every man should return some
of his fortune to society. This belief no doubt has its roots in his
upbringing. He was born in Blackfoot, Idaho, in 1937, into a family
of devout Mormons. The young Huntsman won a scholarship to Wharton
Business School in Pennsylvania. On graduation, he went to work for
his uncle, selling eggs in Los Angeles â~@~S a job he has often
described as “the worst in America”.

Nevertheless, it was while doing this that he developed the world’s
first plastic egg cartons. An agreement with McDonald’s to supply the
fast-food giant with Styrofoam “clamshell” cartons led him to make a
fortune. In 1970, a couple of deals and lots of borrowed money later,
the Huntsman Corporation was born.

So how did a former egg salesman manage to build up such a huge
chemicals group? His strategy was to buy unwanted assets at distressed
prices. This was best illustrated by the $2.8bn acquisition, in 1999,
of the old chemicals empire of ICI based on Teesside.

The highly profitable deal not only doubled the group’s size but was
personally resonant for Huntsman, who can trace his family roots
back to another UK port â~@~S Liverpool. Somewhat surprisingly,
he describes the Teesside complex as “my favourite place on the
entire earth”.

However, as the acquisitions mounted so did the debt. In 2001, the
family had to sell 49 per cent of the business to Matlin Patterson,
the US venture capital firm, a decision Huntsman describes as “a very
painful experience”.

Today, the restructured Huntsman empire is a mix of commodity and
speciality chemicals. Last year the company secured a £16.5m grant
from the British government to build the world’s biggest producer of
low-density polyethylene on Teesside.

Huntsman is convinced that the chemicals industry is “headed for some
very fine years”. He argues that his company is well-placed to weather
the economic cycles since only one third of its business comes from
commodity chemicals.

Huntsman has no plans to retire yet and remains chairman of the group
after handing operational control to his son Peter in 2000. Over
the next two weeks the family will appoint an independent board of
directors â~@~S six out of the 10 board members will be non-family
â~@~S chosen from some of the best-run corporations across America.

So what advice can he give any budding entrepreneurs out there?
Unsurprisingly, he has no magic answer. Success, he notes, “is a
process that’s surprising even to the individuals involved”.

For anyone in need of more practical views, Huntsman is about to
publish a book on how to become a winner. Entitled Winners Never Cheat:
Everyday Values We Learned as Children (But May Have Forgotten),
the book aims to be a lesson in good management behaviour â~@~S
play by the rules and keep your word, for example â~@~S together
with nuggets of successful techniques.

“It’ll be a fun book,” promises Huntsman. “I think if your goal is
to become wealthy, by and large, you fail. If your goal is to try
to be fair and honest and to build a quality company, step by step,
day by day, someday eventually it evolves into an opportunity to
reach beyond your own expectations.”

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From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress