The Debenzer Family Meeting (3)
As soon as Henry finished speaking, Gilberto Piorsen, the family’s financial steward—who clearly had his objections ready—raised his hand first.
“Boss, this structure is excessively bloated. The current system, with the family trust at its apex, has been a proven model for decades. Yet you propose creating a holding company while spinning off the family office and think tank as independent entities? This will only create duplicated management expenses. And this so-called ‘think tank’—it’s nothing but a head with neither authority nor operational departments. I genuinely cannot see what kind of profit it is supposed to generate.”
The others nodded in silent agreement, their eyes turning to Henry. He glanced down at the pages he had prepared on the think tank and family office, quickly realizing that the concepts must sound vague to people anchored in this era. He continued his explanation.
“You’re right—my explanation was insufficient. The overall structure is pyramidal. At the peak sits Debenzer Holdings, with the family office and think tank positioned as its two wings. The family office will inherit the existing committee’s duties, but its core role will be distilled into ‘monitoring and execution.’ Accountants and lawyers dispatched to subsidiaries will oversee operations on the ground, while the office re-verifies their reports. It will serve as a shield, plugging every leak through which family assets might escape. Does that part make sense?”
“Yes. So it’s the family committee with nothing but a new name. That’s how I’ll understand it,” Gilberto replied, his tone coldly sarcastic.
Henry took a sip of his now-lukewarm coffee to wet his throat before firing back immediately.
“It is not merely a name change. The times have changed. We no longer need generalists who handle a hundred tasks adequately. We need specialists who execute a single task perfectly. The keywords are specialization and speed. Look at the current committee. Investment experts are reviewing tax documents while legal counsel meddles in real estate lease agreements. It may appear versatile on the surface, but to me it is simply chaotic incompetence.”
Whoa, didn’t that line just sound badass? That’s exactly the vibe those 21st-century elite CEOs give off in boardrooms!
Despite Henry’s calm demeanor, murmurs rippled through the conference room—“Calling us amateurs…” “There are some disorganized elements, but…”—yet he paid them no mind and pressed on.
“I understand if my words seem excessive. But this is my sincere conviction, which is precisely why I intend to change things. Within the family office, I will establish the Shield Team—a highly specialized legal-design unit focused exclusively on taxation and tax avoidance. We will also need enforcement power worthy of our family’s stature. Therefore, I am creating a dedicated legal team. These will not be interns who merely review contracts.”
Henry tapped the documents on the table lightly and added, “They are a legal strike force. They will bury anyone who dares tarnish the family’s honor under hundreds of lawsuits, forcing them to spend their lives in courtrooms. They will redesign laws and regulations themselves to suit the businesses we desire. Their role is to load the bullet called ‘law’ into the political barrel we control. Their sole purpose is to make anyone who tries to obstruct our family’s ventures feel the terror of impending bankruptcy—regardless of who they are.”
“I will also create a team dedicated exclusively to managing my lifestyle. This is not about hiring attractive secretaries. They will professionally handle the vehicles I ride, my private jets, yachts, personal security details, medical appointments, and even the public image and style I project. Because my very appearance—as the face of this family—is itself a strategic asset. Oh, and Bart, I’m not suggesting I’ll go on television and become a celebrity. Just look at New York right now. Those lawless paparazzi would scale the walls for a single photograph. We cannot stop every attempt, so the image they capture must become our combat strength. I’ve named this unit the Management Team. Since it isn’t urgent, we can postpone it for now.”
Henry waved his hand casually and continued.
“Beyond that, I need an independent investment team that can move faster than my own hands and feet at my command. We cannot hold meetings for every single dollar. In future family meetings, we will decide only ‘how much to allocate.’ How it is deployed will be my sole discretion. This is also my personal insistence. We’ll simply call it the Investment Team.”
Having unloaded his prepared remarks, Henry looked around at the executives who were practically squirming for a chance to speak. His throat had grown dry from talking so much; he soothed it with another sip of cold coffee.
As expected of the family’s true power player, Bart frowned deeply and set his pen down on the table with a click.
“Henry, I understand the intention… but creating new organizations—the legal team, the Shield Team, and so on—represents obvious cost and manpower waste. Our current personnel are already highly competent. Is there any need to bring in outsiders and have them operate in secrecy? Doing so could damage the family’s unity.”
“Which is exactly why we must change it now—before the family grows any larger. We need to reinforce the framework while we still can. Our existing talents will form the core of that framework, and the new recruits will be the cement that hardens it. If we evaluate them after working together for roughly a year, efficiency will improve without harming our bonds.”
Gilberto immediately seized the opening, as if he had been waiting for it.
“I acknowledge that you possess the authority, Boss. However, granting the Investment Team full discretion is far too dangerous. Investments free of committee oversight could easily become reckless gambles. Please do not forget that even under the previous patriarch, every investment underwent strict consensus.”
“Both of your concerns are perfectly reasonable—by the standards of the past. But as I said earlier, the times have changed. In today’s markets, where hundreds of thousands of dollars can shift in the space of a single second, waiting for consensus will only turn us into prey.”
Consensus, he says. These people have no idea how terrifying 21st-century day trading can be. I’m literally building the board to exploit a money-duplication bug, and they want me under supervision?
Henry met each elder’s eyes in turn and drove the final nail in.
“I will be stubborn on this point. I am genuinely confident I can succeed. Let us evaluate the Investment Team’s continued existence based on the results this time next year. I believe everyone now understands the family office, so let’s move on. Shall we discuss the ‘think tank’—the one that supposedly generates no revenue?”
Henry had zero intention of reversing course on either the Investment Team or the family office. There might be plenty of investors in the world with sharper instincts than his, but no one else could steadily multiply assets by copying a future that was already confirmed.
In this era, the term “family office” was not yet the proper noun it would become. If one were forced to translate it literally, it sounded like the crude, bureaucratic phrase “the Kim family’s house office.” So it was only natural that the family’s experts, upon hearing the words, immediately raised cost concerns: “So what exactly is that office supposed to do?”
Yet Henry knew its true value to the marrow of his bones and had no intention of yielding. He had, however, deliberately omitted one of the family office’s core functions from his design: family governance.
Family governance was the system by which family members established decision-making rules and frameworks to sustainably manage shared goals—vision, values, assets, and corporate stewardship. It also included successor education.
At present, Henry judged this to be the “growth phase,” a time when he needed to act decisively and rapidly expand the family’s wealth. It was not the moment to worry about preserving the status quo or delivering moral lectures.
Brakes like governance can be installed after the family becomes as massive as a dinosaur. Actually… will we even need them later?
In his previous life, twenty-six years earlier, he had considered implementing it after three years of trial and error under supervision. But since successor education would ultimately involve creating clones with points and transferring his consciousness into them, the probability that this family’s heir would always be Henry himself was overwhelmingly high.
That realization had led him to a firm decision: he would never meet the successor clone in person, nor allow any affection to develop.
In all those movies and anime about immortal villains I watched in my past life, they always reach the end, declare “It’s time to change bodies!” in a threatening tone, only for a sudden tragic flashback to appear. Then they hesitate because of emotions—affection, love—and end up dying because of it.
Henry intended to eliminate any possibility of such a scene from the start. Since the new body would house his own consciousness anyway, what was the point of education? The best he could do was remain one step removed, harboring the true heart of a parent—Don’t cause trouble, don’t get hurt, and please, just grow up healthy.
Ideally, he would only create the successor right before switching bodies. Of course, reality was unpredictable, and voluntary suicide was strictly restricted; he could not simply decide “I’ll die tomorrow” and do so. Still, he would either minimize that gap or use some pretext—perhaps claiming the successor had become obsessed with music and gone to study abroad in distant Europe—to avoid any meetings.