Biography & Early Wealth Journey
MacMillan had a good head for business and under his leadership the company was saved from the brink of going under. He put a solid financial plan in place and the company grew consistently. Until 1960, either a Cargill or MacMillan served as CEO of the company. Erwin Kelm was the first non-family member to run the business. He diversified the company into freight, shipping, and commodities. In the late 1970s, Whitney MacMillan took over the family business. He grew the company's revenue to nearly $30 billion annually.
The company went through growing pains in the 1990s. The Cargill-MacMillan family wanted to keep the company private, while others wanted to take it public. In the end, the Cargill company bought 17% of the Cargill-MacMillan family's shares for $430 million. Those shares were purchases from 72 family members. The board of directors was also restructured to include six family members, six unrelated business people, and five managers.
Cargill remains a family-owned business as the descendants of the founder from the Cargill and MacMillan families own over 90% of it. They are a notoriously private family. Most of them live on large ranches in Wisconsin, Montana, and Minnesota. They rarely give interviews, they avoid the spotlight, and it's rare to see any of them mentioned in magazines or newspapers.
The Cargill-MacMillan family remain active board members but they no longer run the day-to-day operation of Cargill. The company has continued to grow and expand over the years and now has 150,000 employees in 66 countries. Cargill's annual revenue is $115 billion. It is the largest privately held corporation in the U.S.