You are Daniela Esquivel-Larraín, 47, CEO of Mercados Coquimbo, a 220-store specialty grocer in Chile and Peru. Fourteen months before the PE sponsor exits, the managing director asks you to wind down the program that the firm — and your reputation — is built on.
The situation
Mercados Coquimbo was founded in 1958 by your grandfather Aurelio Esquivel in the port of Coquimbo. Your father grew it from one store to 47. In 2019 the family sold to Sienna Capital — a US PE sponsor in their 6-year hold window — for $610M. The deal terms retained you as CEO. You have been the third-generation CEO for seven years.
The firm's signature is Programa Coquimbo: a five-year employee program you designed and launched in 2020. Every store associate vests 0.05% phantom equity over five years, receives 80 hours/year of paid training (basic finance, language, food-systems), and access to a small-business literacy curriculum your foundation co-funds. Today the program covers 8,100 associates across Chile and Peru. It costs roughly 1.8% of revenue annually. It is what you talk about when Bloomberg LatAm asks you to talk. It is the reason Harvard Business School wrote a teaching case on Mercados Coquimbo in 2023.
Six weeks ago Howard Trent, the Sienna MD who chairs the board, sent you a one-page memo. Sienna intends to exit in fourteen months at the 6-year window-close. The exit thesis works at 9.6% EBITDA; the firm sits at 8.2%. The 140 bps gap is roughly the cost of Programa Coquimbo. Sienna's analysis: drop the program, lift EBITDA, exit at a 0.7x higher multiple, capture $84–112M of incremental enterprise value. Howard's memo closes: "The brand benefit is real but illegible to financial buyers. Six weeks for your recommendation."