Mango shields its future: Toni Ruiz consolidates power amid Jonathan Andic legal case
The fashion multinational has separated ownership and management, placing Toni Ruiz at the helm, whilst its founder Isak Andic and his son Jonathan face legal consequences.
The firewall that distances Mango from the Andic family
According to ABC, Mango has built a protective wall between the company's management and the family of its founder, Isak Andic, who died tragically and whose eldest son, Jonathan, faces a homicide charge. The Catalan fashion multinational has decidedly committed to the professionalisation of its management, distancing itself from the family business model that failed to renew itself in time.
The architect of that transformation is Toni Ruiz, current president and chief executive officer of the group. Ruiz joined Mango in 2015 as financial director, rose to general director in 2018 and was appointed chief executive officer in March 2020, coinciding with Isak Andic's definitive withdrawal from direct management. At that same moment, Andic transferred a 5% stake in the company to him, an unmistakable signal that Ruiz was the designated person to lead the firm's future.
The decision was not hastily made. In 2014, Andic had handed over the helm to his son Jonathan, an experience that did not succeed and which forced the founder to return from retirement to correct course. That period marked a turning point: it became clear that Mango's continuity did not rest with his direct descendants, but with a professional and independent management team.
Barely two months after Isak Andic's death, the board of directors of Punto Fa—the holding company of Mango's business—ratified that course by appointing Ruiz also president of the multinational's board. Ruiz thus accumulated the two highest executive responsibilities of the company, a concentration of power that responds to the intention expressed by the founder himself before his death.
The Andic heirs—his children—own the remaining 95% of the company and could have reversed that strategy. They did not. With their consent, Mango has opted for the formal separation between ownership and management, a model that ABC places at the opposite end of cases such as Freixenet and closer to that of Puig, another Catalan company that managed to professionalise itself and project internationally.
That choice takes on added significance now. The homicide charge hanging over Jonathan Andic, detained by the Mossos d'Esquadra in connection with his father's death, makes an especially timely decision that was taken for purely business reasons. With Ruiz at the helm and the heirs in the background, the group's operations are shielded against any judicial or reputational turbulence that could stem from the criminal proceedings.
The resulting corporate structure places Mango in a singular position: a multinational with predominantly family capital but with professional management that answers to no family member on a day-to-day basis. A balance that, in light of events, the company has achieved at precisely the right moment.
Source: ABC