JAB Holding Company ("JAB" or Joh. A. Benckiser) is a German conglomerate, headquartered in

Luxembourg Luxembourg ( ; lb, Lëtzebuerg ; french: link=no, Luxembourg; german: link=no, Luxemburg), officially the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, ; french: link=no, Grand-Duché de Luxembourg ; german: link=no, Großherzogtum Luxemburg is a small lan ...

, that includes investments in companies operating in the areas of

consumer goods A final good or consumer good is a final product ready for sale that is used by the consumer to satisfy current wants or needs, unlike a intermediate good, which is used to produce other goods. A microwave oven or a bicycle is a final good, but ...

forestry Forestry is the science and craft of creating, managing, planting, using, conserving and repairing forests, woodlands, and associated resources for human and environmental benefits. Forestry is practiced in plantations and natural stands. Th ...

, coffee, luxury fashion, animal health, and fast food, among others.

Overview

As of 2015, JAB’s portfolio included a minority stake in the consumer products company

Reckitt Benckiser Reckitt Benckiser Group plc, trading as Reckitt, is a British multinational consumer goods company headquartered in Slough, England. It is a producer of health, hygiene and nutrition products. The company was formed in March 1999 by the merg ...

, and majority stakes in

Coty Coty may refer to: *Coty, Inc., an American beauty products manufacturer *Coty Award, the Coty American Fashion Critics' Awards (1943-1984) by Coty, Inc. *COTY, abbreviation for Car of the Year awards People * François Coty (1874–1934), perfum ...

Peet’s Coffee & Tea Peet's Coffee is a San Francisco Bay Area-based specialty coffee roaster and retailer owned by JAB Holding Company via JDE Peet's. Founded in 1966 by Alfred Peet in Berkeley, California, Peet's introduced the United States to its darker roasted ...

Caribou Coffee Caribou Coffee Company is an American coffee company and coffeehouse chain. It was founded in Edina, Minnesota, Edina, Minnesota, in 1992. As of May 2015, the company operates 603 locations worldwide. It is headquartered in Brooklyn Center, Minne ...

Company,

Jacobs Douwe Egberts JDE Peet's is a Dutch company that owns beverage brands, mostly of coffee, tea and hot chocolate. It was formed in 2015 following the merger of the coffee division of Mondelez International with Douwe Egberts as Jacobs Douwe Egberts. The stock of ...

(JDE), Einstein Noah Restaurant Group, and

Jimmy Choo Datuk Jimmy Choo Back from ...

. As of that date, JAB also owned

Bally Bally may refer to: Places *Bally, a historical spelling of Bali *Bally (from the Irish ''baile'') or townland, a traditional division of land, as well as a common prefix in the names of settlements throughout Ireland *Bally, Bally-Jagachha, a c ...

Belstaff Belstaff is a clothing brand owned by British chemicals company Ineos. The company was founded in 1924 by Eli Belovitch and his son-in-law Harry Grosberg in Longton, Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire. The name Belstaff is a combination of Eli's sur ...

, Zagliani,

Espresso House Espresso House is the largest coffeehouse chain in the Nordic countries. Founded in Lund, Sweden in 1996 by Elisabet and Charles Asker. In March 2018 reached over 460 locations throughout Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark, and Germany. History ...

, and Baresso Coffee. In May 2014, D.E Master Blenders 1753 announced to acquire a majority stake in Mondelez's coffee business (outside of France) to form Jacobs Douwe Egberts, it would combine brands Jacobs, Carte Noire, Gevalia, Kenco, Tassimo and Millicano from

Mondelez International Mondelez International, Inc. ( ), often styled Mondelēz, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational confectionery, food industry, food, holding and drink industry, beverage and snack food company based in Chicago. Mondelez has an ...

and Douwe Egberts, L’OR, Pilao and Senseo from D.E Master Blenders. In August 2014, under the Peet's Coffee & Tea brand, JAB acquired

Mighty Leaf Tea The Mighty Leaf Tea Company is a specialty tea manufacturer and distributor based in Emeryville, California. It was founded in 1996 by Gary Shinner and Jill Portman who are married.

, a specialty tea retailer based in the

San Francisco Bay San Francisco Bay is a large tidal estuary in the U.S. state of California, and gives its name to the San Francisco Bay Area. It is dominated by the big cities of San Francisco, San Jose, and Oakland. San Francisco Bay drains water from a ...

Area. In October 2015, Peet's Coffee & Tea acquired Portland, Oregon's Stumptown Coffee in a deal whose terms were not disclosed, and in the same month acquired a majority stake in Chicago-based

Intelligentsia Coffee & Tea Intelligentsia Coffee is an American coffee roasting company and retailer based in Chicago, Illinois. Founded in 1995 by Doug Zell and Emily Mange, Intelligentsia is considered a major representative of third wave coffee. In 2015, Peet's Coffee ...

. In March 2016, JAB and other investors acquired

Keurig Green Mountain Keurig Dr Pepper Inc., formerly Green Mountain Coffee Roasters (1981–2014) and Keurig Green Mountain (2014–2018), is a publicly traded American beverage and coffeemaker conglomerate with headquarters in Burlington, Massachusetts. Formed in ...

for $13.9 billion. In May 2016, JAB-controlled JAB Beech reached an agreement to acquire US doughnut shop operator

Krispy Kreme Krispy Kreme, Inc. (previously Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, Inc.) is an American multinational doughnut company and coffeehouse chain. Krispy Kreme was founded by Vernon Rudolph (1915–1973), who bought a yeast-raised recipe from a New Orleans ch ...

for $1.35 billion. In April 2017, JAB reached an agreement to buy U.S.-based

Panera Bread Panera Bread is an American chain store of bakery-café fast casual restaurants with over 2,000 locations, all of which are in the United States and Canada. Its headquarters are in Sunset Hills, Missouri. The company operates as Saint Louis ...

, a

fast casual A fast casual restaurant, found primarily in the United States and Canada, does not offer full table service, but advertises higher quality food than fast food restaurants, with fewer frozen or processed ingredients. It is an intermediate concep ...

bakery-café chain, for $7.5 billion. Also in April, JAB was reported to be stepping back from investment in luxury goods, with reported plans to sell its stakes in the designer shoe and clothing brands

Jimmy Choo Datuk Jimmy Choo Back from ...

, and

. In August 2017, JAB announced the acquisition of

Bruegger's Bagels Bruegger's Enterprises, Inc. is a restaurant operator and subsidiary of the Luxembourg-based company JAB Holding Company. It and its wholly owned subsidiary Threecaf Brands Canada, Inc., are franchisers and operators of Bruegger's bakery-cafés ...

. On 29 January 2018, Keurig Green Mountain announced it was acquiring

Dr Pepper Snapple Group Dr Pepper Snapple Group (also called Dr. Pepper/7up Inc.) was an American multinational soft drink company based in Plano, Texas, and as of July 2018 it is a business unit of the publicly traded conglomerate Keurig Dr Pepper. Formerly Cadbury ...

, with JAB owning 87% of the combined companies. As of February 2018, JAB retained ownership of a minority stake in Bally after sale of its majority stake to the Chinese conglomerate

Shandong Ruyi Shandong Ruyi Technology Group Co., Ltd is a Chinese textiles and clothing company. Founded in 1972 in Jining, China, it is a subsidiary of Jining Ruyi Investment Co., Ltd. As of 2017, Ruyi Group was the largest textile manufacturer in China. It ...

. JAB's beverage empire was described in 2018 as having been built on "buy now, pay later" ( extended terms of trade) principles; some coffee roasters owned by JAB are reported to require up to 300 days of financing from their suppliers. In February 2019 the company spent $1.2 billion to acquire Compassion-First Pet Hospitals then purchased National Veterinary Associates four months later. The combined revenue of Compassion-First and National Veterinary Associates is expected to be $3 billion in 2020, placing it among the three largest players in the industry barely 12 months after the firm’s first takeover.

Ownership

Owned by Germany’s Reimann family, 90% of JAB belongs to four of the nine adopted children of the late Albert Reimann Jr. (1898–1984). They trace their wealth to chemist Ludwig Reimann, who, in 1828, joined with

Johann Adam Benckiser Johann, typically a male given name, is the German form of ''Iohannes'', which is the Latin form of the Greek name ''Iōánnēs'' (), itself derived from Hebrew name ''Yochanan'' () in turn from its extended form (), meaning "Yahweh is Gracious" ...

(founder of the namesake chemical company). Reimann married one of Benckiser's daughters and ended up owning the business. Great-grandson Albert Reimann Jr. took over after his father died in 1952 and added consumer goods. Initially, each of the nine children had inherited 11.1% ownership in JAB upon Albert's death in 1984. In the following years, five of the heirs sold their stakes to the other four: Matthias Reimann-Andersen, Renate Reimann-Haas, Stefan Reimann-Andersen and Wolfgang Reimann. As of January 2015, each of the four owns about $3.8 billion in JAB shares. The primary shareholder of JAB, as listed in its 2016 Consolidated Financial Statements, is Austrian-domiciled company Agnaten SE. Agnaten is listed, by PrivCo, as a subsidiary of Joh. A. Benckiser GmbH, the investment vehicle of the Reimann family.

Founder's support of Hitler and Nazism

In March 2019, a German newspaper revealed that Albert Reimann Sr. and his son Albert Reimann Jr. were enthusiastic supporters of

Adolf Hitler Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Nazi Germany, Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his death in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the le ...

and the

Nazi party The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party (german: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP), was a far-right politics, far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that crea ...

well before they took power and profited from

forced labor Forced labour, or unfree labour, is any work relation, especially in modern or early modern history, in which people are employed against their will with the threat of destitution, detention, violence including death, or other forms of ex ...

in their industrial chemicals company in southern Germany and in their own home. The revelations sparked ethical questions about consumer support for companies that owe their success in part to the historical use of forced labor. Two months later, several of the Reimanns revealed to ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' that their mother, Emilie Landecker, Albert Jr.'s mistress, baptized as a Catholic like her mother, was the daughter of Alfred Landecker, a Jewish man deported to the

Izbica Ghetto The Izbica ghetto was a Jewish ghetto created by Nazi Germany in Izbica in occupied Poland during World War II, serving as a transfer point for deportation of Jews from Poland, Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia to Bełżec and Sobibór exterm ...

in 1942. His ultimate fate is unknown although many Jews sent to Izbica were held there pending transport to the Belzec and

Sobibor extermination camp Sobibor (, Polish: ) was an extermination camp built and operated by Nazi Germany as part of Operation Reinhard. It was located in the forest near the village of Żłobek Duży in the General Government region of German-occupied Poland. As ...

s. They have renamed the family foundation after him and doubled its budget to €25 million (US$28.2 million), to fund projects that honour the victims of the

Holocaust The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; a ...

and

Nazism Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Na ...

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