The Asphales holding, now Fortales, was founded by Piet Van Waeyenberge in 1988.

History

In the wake of the attempted take-over of the

Société Générale de Belgique The ' ( nl, Generale Maatschappij van België; literally "General Company of Belgium") was a large Belgian bank and later holdings company which existed between 1822 and 2003. The ''Société générale'' was originally founded as an investm ...

Carlo De Benedetti Carlo De Benedetti (born 14 November 1934) ''"Sfide perse e vinte: Repubblica-Mondadori"'', ''Gazzetta di Mantova'', 10 March 1998, webpage is an Italian industrialist, engineer, and publisher. He is both an Italian and naturalized Swiss citiz ...

, Piet Van Waeyenberge wanted to create an investment instrument to provide for capital for

Belgian Belgian may refer to: * Something of, or related to, Belgium * Belgians, people from Belgium or of Belgian descent * Languages of Belgium, languages spoken in Belgium, such as Dutch, French, and German *Ancient Belgian language, an extinct languag ...

companies in order to prevent hostile foreign

takeover In business, a takeover is the purchase of one company (the ''target'') by another (the ''acquirer'' or ''bidder''). In the UK, the term refers to the acquisition of a public company whose shares are listed on a stock exchange, in contrast to ...

s. Several Belgian businesspeople participated in the holding, such as

Paul Janssen Paul Adriaan Jan, Baron Janssen (12 September 1926 - 11 November 2003) was a Belgian physician. He was the founder of Janssen Pharmaceutica, a pharmaceutical company with over 20,000 employees which is now a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson. Ea ...

(

Janssen Pharmaceutica Janssen Pharmaceuticals is a pharmaceutical company headquartered in Beerse, Belgium, and wholly-owned by Johnson & Johnson. It was founded in 1953 by Paul Janssen. In 1961, Janssen Pharmaceuticals was purchased by New Jersey-based American ...

), the Santens family, the ''Holdifima group'' of the families Plouvier-Kreglinger. Later on the families Debaillie, Sabbe (ex-Prado), Moortgat (

Duvel Moortgat Brewery Duvel Moortgat Brewery (Brouwerij Duvel Moortgat) is a Flemish family-controlled brewery founded in 1871 in the Antwerp Province (Belgium). Its strong golden pale ale, Duvel, is exported to more than forty countries. Duvel is Brabantian, Ghent an ...

) and Versele ( Versele-Laga) joined the initiative. The holding bought shares of ', a large Belgian

insurer Insurance is a means of protection from financial loss in which, in exchange for a fee, a party agrees to compensate another party in the event of a certain loss, damage, or injury. It is a form of risk management, primarily used to hedge ...

, one of the predecessors of what would become Fortis.

Sources

Dynasty IN België

Fortis & Cie : victoire... confortable
Financial services companies of Belgium {{Belgium-company-stub

History

See also

Sources