IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/chf/rpseri/rp0613.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

‘Running in the Family’ The Evolution of Ownership,Control and Performance in German Familyowned Firms, 1903-2003

Author

Listed:
  • Olaf Ehrhardt

    (University of Applied Sciences Straslund und Humboldt University Berlin)

  • Eric NOWAK

    (University of Lugano)

  • Felix-Michael WEBER

    (Elephant Equity, Munich)

Abstract

In this study we analyze the evolution of ownership, control, and performance in German founding-family-owned firms over the last century. We employ a hand-collected matched sample of German stock companies founded before World War I and still in existence in 2003. Comparing family-owned and non-family-owned firms over the 100-year time-span, we are able to analyze a variety of variables including ownership, control, industries, bank relationships and performance, as well as the impact of intergenerational control transfers. We find that families are slow to give up ownership , and control of family businesses remains strong even after several generations. Family firms seem to outperform nonfamily firms in terms of operating performance, but performance declines over the generations.

Suggested Citation

  • Olaf Ehrhardt & Eric NOWAK & Felix-Michael WEBER, 2006. "‘Running in the Family’ The Evolution of Ownership,Control and Performance in German Familyowned Firms, 1903-2003," Swiss Finance Institute Research Paper Series 06-13, Swiss Finance Institute.
  • Handle: RePEc:chf:rpseri:rp0613
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=922288
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Möbert, Jochen & Tydecks, Patrick, 2007. "Power and Ownership Structures among German Companies. A Network Analysis of Financial Linkages," Publications of Darmstadt Technical University, Institute for Business Studies (BWL) 35974, Darmstadt Technical University, Department of Business Administration, Economics and Law, Institute for Business Studies (BWL).
    2. Moebert, Jochen & Tydecks, Patrick, 2007. "Power and Ownership Structures among German Companies. A Network Analysis of Financial Linkages," Darmstadt Discussion Papers in Economics 179, Darmstadt University of Technology, Department of Law and Economics.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Family firms; performance; ownership; control; German stock markets;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G32 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Financing Policy; Financial Risk and Risk Management; Capital and Ownership Structure; Value of Firms; Goodwill
    • N23 - Economic History - - Financial Markets and Institutions - - - Europe: Pre-1913
    • N24 - Economic History - - Financial Markets and Institutions - - - Europe: 1913-

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:chf:rpseri:rp0613. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Ridima Mittal (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/fameech.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.