Rocha dos Santos Family
Ongoing Strategy Investments was created in 2004 to manage the diversification of investments of the Rocha dos Santos family. The family was the major shareholder of Sociadade Nacional de Sabões (National Soap Society – SNS), an industrial conglomerate formed by 25 companies in the late 1980s, which employed around 1.4 thousand workers and had an average revenue of around 100 million Euros. They were once the largest private group in Portugal after the Carnation Revolution (1974).
The Rocha dos Santos family wanted to withdraw their SNS investments – a company which had João Rocha, Nuno Rocha dos Santos de Almeida Vasconcellos’ great grandfather. The society’s shares were sold in 1991 and the revenue redirected in the stocks market. SNS would go downhill from there on, entering a bankruptcy process still in the 1990s. The group’s insolvency was decreed in 1995.
Ongoing Strategy Investments was created precisely to create a professional management for the family’s investments, gathered over five generations of industrial businesspeople. Nuno Vasconcellos was the only male child of João Rocha dos Santos, major stockholder of SNS in the golden times of the conglomerate – there were also to granddaughters. For this reason the grandfather left him a considerable part of his wealth.
After João Rocha dos Santos death in 1989, however, Nuno Vasconcellos gave his part of his inheritance to his mother, Rocha dos Santos only child. He tried to justify himself by saying that the inheritance should in fact belong to his mother, and that he wouldn’t be able to explain to his sisters why he was richer then them.
After the son’s decision, Isabel became the major stockholder of the families businesses, with shareholding control of RS Holding and, consequently, of Ongoing Strategy Investments. However, with the economical crisis that followed the collapse of Portugal Telecom, the Ongoing group had their insolvency decreed and the Rocha dos Santos family transferred their businesses to Brazil.
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Sources
https://www.publico.pt/2016/08/29/economia/noticia/ongoing-strategy-investments-declarada-insolvente-1742643
http://Agência LUSA. Ongoing declarada insolvente. Accessed Oct. 2017