Securing Financial Resources as a Key Governance Measure

Abstract

In a recent IMD Survey of 200 family businesses with between 20 and 2000 employees and representing 20 nationalities, the respondents were asked whether they had ever considered going public with the shares of their family businesses. No less than 40 per cent answered in the affirmative. To the follow-up question ‘Do you think you may issue shares to the public within the next ten years?’ almost a quarter of the sample (23 per cent) answered in the affirmative and a remarkable 43 per cent responded ‘Maybe’. This means that roughly two thirds of the companies had considered or were seriously considering floating their companies on the stock exchange.¹ Whether to offer shares to the public is obviously a key issue for the owners of family businesses, and therefore warrants detailed examination.

Can anybody remember when the times were not hard, and money not scarce?

(Ralph Waldo Emerson, American philosopher, 1803–82)