The enemy at home: diversification and professionalization at BOMBE

This case describes the creation, growth, and diversification of BOMBE, a second-generation family business whose development was partly motivated by the need for economic growth in the Spanish community where it is located. The case shows the paradoxes faced by family businesses by highlighting, on one hand, the need to professionalize the firm’s management to improve business performance and, on the other, how too much trust in nonfamily members can lead to opportunistic behaviors that, due to poor oversight by family members, almost destroyed the family business and the family itself. The case details how an ill-informed decision to hire an outsider ended with the group of companies almost reduced to ashes, extensive legal proceedings, and police protection for the owners and their family. Now, family leaders admit they made mistakes, but they still do not know when it started and, even worse, how they arrived at the current situation.