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Jardine Matheson has appointed a partner from private equity group PAG as its new chief executive, in the Anglo-Asian conglomerate’s latest effort to transform its business model.
Hong Kong-based Jardines said on Thursday that Lincoln Pan, partner and co-head of private equity at PAG, would succeed group managing director John Witt on December 1.
The appointment follows a series of changes at the near 200-year-old group, which counts the Keswick family as its biggest shareholder and has interests ranging from property to retail.
In recent years, Jardines has handed its vast array of portfolio companies more control of their day-to-day operations as it focuses on making and managing investments. Jardines has said its move away from an owner-operator model will improve returns for shareholders.
“Jardines has changed a lot since we simplified the holding company structure into a more efficient and investor-friendly group,” said Ben Keswick, Jardines’ executive chair and scion of the company’s controlling family.
“Lincoln’s wealth of investment experience in the Asia Pacific region and track record of working with company boards and management teams makes him extremely well-placed . . . to implement our strategy.”
Jardines has in recent months revamped its own board and those of its portfolio companies, including by appointing several independent directors with private equity experience.
Last year, it scrapped its group-level graduate trainee programme, while staff at the parent company have been encouraged to focus their careers on one of its portfolio companies rather than rotating between them.
The Hong Kong-based group’s property holdings include Hongkong Land and Mandarin Oriental, the luxury hotel group. It also controls DFI Retail, which runs Ikea stores in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Indonesia, and a chain of auto dealerships across China. Its biggest source of profits in recent years has been its controlling interest in Indonesian conglomerate Astra.
Jardines was established in 1832 in Guangzhou by Scottish opium traders William Jardine and James Matheson. For decades, it was the most important of Hong Kong’s colonial-era hongs, conglomerates with significant economic and political sway.
In 2021, Keswick, the chair, unwound a defensive cross-holding structure invented by his uncle and predecessor Henry Keswick, which investors complained depressed its share price.
Pan was previously chief executive for greater China at Willis Towers Watson and a consultant at McKinsey.
A person familiar with Pan’s career said he was “instrumental in building up the entire non-China franchise” for PAG’s private equity division, as the Hong Kong-based firm expanded its investments outside China.
Pan said on Thursday that leaving PAG was an “incredibly difficult decision” but that he was excited to help Jardines deliver “ambitious financial objectives . . . while preserving Jardines’ long-term approach and unique culture”.
