Family Business: a Chair for a Growing Form of Control

BETWEEN 30% AND 40% OF COMPANIES ARE FAMILY CONTROLLED IN MANY EUROPEAN COUNTRIES AND THE RISE OF EMERGING ECONOMIES BOOSTS THE SPREAD OF A FORM THAT IS NOT DESTINED TO BE SUPPLANTED BY THE PUBLIC COMPANY. ALL THIS WAS HIGHLIGHTED AT THE INAUGURATION OF THE AIDAF EY CHAIR IN STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT OF FAMILY BUSINESS IN MEMORY OF ALBERTO FALCK

Those who think that the family business is a residual form of control, inevitably destined to succumb to the advance of the public company, will be surprised by a reality check. The share of family businesses among the Fortune Global 500 rose from 15% in 2005 to 19% today, thanks mainly to the growth of emerging economies like China, India, Brazil and South Korea, where it is the dominant form of control. Among the 300 largest enterprises in Italy, 40.7% are family-controlled and in many other European countries, the data are similar: 36.7% in Germany, 36% in France, 35.6% in Spain and 32.9% in Sweden. Nine of the ten largest companies in the world in the luxury sector are family controlled, as well as five out of ten in distribution and four out of ten in the automotive industry.
 
This data was presented this afternoon at Università Bocconi at the inauguration of the new AIdAF-EY Chair in Strategic Management of Family Business in memory of Alberto Falck, by the holder of the chair, Guido Corbetta.
 
 "The Chair", recalls Corbetta, "is the evolution of a temporary chair, launched in 2004, and marks an important evolution into the international arena thanks to the involvement of EY that, through its Global Family Business Center of Excellence, is active in this field all over the world".
 
"The development of AIdAF Chair in Strategic management of Family Business, which now becomes the permanent AIdAF-EY Chair", says Elena Zambon, President of the Italian Association of Family Business, "is part of a continuous strategy to enhance the commitment  AIdAF made in 2004, along with a group of associated enterprises, to ensure in-depth studies on topics that characterize the family business. Only through serious and ongoing analysis we can exit from clichés used to describe the family business, so that we can study and enhance the characteristics that distinguish the healthy entrepreneurial fabric of this country. It turns out that it is precisely the family business, through important basic choices, to give continuity and stability to an economic policy that, even in difficult economic times, must look with courage and determination at a future of possible growth".
 
"Family business", says Donato Iacovone, CEO EY Italy and Managing Partner EY Mediterranean, "is, as you can see from the data, an important part of the Italian economy, a productive model that has been able to combine business, family and heritage, and has proven its effectiveness and potential over the years. Entrepreneurs today face many opportunities, such as internationalization and digital innovation: EY, always close to the needs of enterprises, want to help entrepreneurs successfully face up to these challenges. For this reason we have chosen to invest in the establishment of a permanent chair, the first dedicated to training the young to compete in world markets on behalf of our family businesses and we have involved our own Global Center of Excellence to provide, through our global experience, concrete support to the different needs of the family business ".
 
The AIdAF-EY in Family Business Strategy in memory of Alberto Falck will continue the activities of the temporary chair, among which the AUB Observatory on Italian family businesses, which every year, in collaboration with AIdAF, Unicredit and the Chamber of Commerce of Milan, analyzes the balance sheets of all of the over 4,000 Italian family businesses with revenues of 50 million euro or more, and the Annual Conference of Family Businesses in collaboration with AIdAF.
 
The transformation into a permanent chair means that donors finance a fund (endowment), which is invested by the University; the yield is used to finance the activities of the chair. The creation of the permanent chairs is a form of funding that aligns Bocconi practices to those of the best universities, especially the Anglo-Saxon world.
 
Besides AIdAF and the EY Network, other supporters of the chair will be ApAF, Banca Sella, De Agostini, Eingenmann and Veronelli, Epta Group, Falck Renewables, Fontana Finanziaria, Inaz, Italcementi, maggiore Finanziaria, Mapei, Rizzo-Bottiglieri-De Carlini Armatori and Vitale Barberis Canonico.

by Fabio Todesco