Manuel Gonzalez Serna

Juan Manuel Gonzalez Serna began in business in a family business located in Campo de Criptana (Ciudad Real), dedicated to the manufacture of flour, animal feed and pasta. After a thorough training he graduated in economic, business, and right by ICADE, and MBA from IESE-, decided to accept a post of Manager at another company, since he believed that in the family business I wouldn’t you easy to carry out a modern and professional management style. However, two years later their relatives asked him to assume the direction of the business. To enter the first months he devoted himself to talk to employees, and from there, as he has acknowledged, pulled out their best ideas. After ten years at the head of the family business, he decided to start a solo career, and began working with a friend in a dispatch from advice for buying and selling companies.

There arose him, a few months later, the possibility of buying Siro biscuit factory to the multinational Danone. Danone had bought Siro three years before, and when did he had three factories of biscuits and eighteen million euro invoiced. After a not too successful management, Danone was forced to close two of the three factories, and at the time of the sale, in 1991, Siro billed less than nine million for the operation, Gonzalez Serna needed a loan of three million euros, which got thanks to the good relationship gained from even Thomas (who would become President of the Bank of Granada)carved in the stage developed in the family business. The three million credit returned it in just two years, and then requested another to buy Reglero, which allowed him to complement its offerings with artisan type pasta, very appreciated by consumers. The following year, in 1994, it acquired Rio, also of biscuits, the Italian group Barilla, in 1998 acquired pasta squirrel and the family, and in 2002 bought an emblem, ancient Fontaneda biscuit in Aguilar de Campoo factory.