Press releases

Publicly traded family businesses in Europe do business with a longer-term perspective and more successfully than companies that are not family businesses – and the greater the influence of the founding family, the better their performance. This is the conclusion reached by the study “Listed family firms in Europe” commissioned by the Foundation for Family Businesses and authored by an international research team directed by Marc Steffen Rapp, Professor at the Marburg Center for Institutional Economics of the Philipps-Universität Marburg.

The EU has chosen a procedure for adopting sustainability standards that violates EU treaties. At issue is the planned Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD). The standards necessary for it actually ought to be discussed between the European Parliament and the European Council, but the task of lawmaking has been delegated to the EU Commission. Even the Commission has laid down only a few core points and is leaving the details to an external organisation – "Efrag", the European Financial Reporting Advisory Group – which is a private consultancy under the influence of interest groups.

The world’s states must move closer together in their trade policies and dismantle trade barriers. This would be the correct response from the European Union to the new geopolitical reality according to the study “European Trade Policy at the Service of Geopolitics?” published by the Foundation for Family Businesses. This study was prepared by Professor Gabriel Felbermayr, the director of the Austrian Institute of Economic Research (Wifo).

Family businesses support clear government rules and the social market economy. Particularly in exceptional situations such as the financial market crisis, the coronavirus pandemic and now, in view of a war in Europe, state intervention is necessary. But when does government regulation become dirigisme? Is responsible enterprise possible if economic activity must constantly be measured according to abstract moral categories?

The date was 8 February 1972. The decision by the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands, SED) was taken in strict secrecy: the SED leadership demanded that the last remaining private and semi-nationalised businesses in the GDR be converted into nationally owned enterprises. The names of the owner families were to be erased and proud traditions extinguished. The purchase price was to be a small sum as compensation.

A guiding aim of family businesses is to transfer the company in good condition to the next generation and to protect it from long-term damage. Moreover, a sparing use of natural resources is in their own interests. This is why sustainable business practices in general and environmental and climate protection in particular are self-evident for family businesses.

The economic impact of punitive US tariffs is increasingly felt in Germany. Tariffs imposed in 2019 due to Airbus subsidies have led to a 40 per cent decline in exports by the affected sectors outside the aircraft industry. This is the result of a study carried out by Professor Gabriel Felbermayr, PhD, Head of the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, on behalf of the Foundation for Family Businesses.

The Advisory Board of the Foundation for Family Businesses cautions against weighing down economic, financial market and competition policy with environmental policy objectives. “Protecting the climate is the greatest challenge facing our generation; however, orienting all economic policy areas towards environmental objectives does not make sense”, concludes the board.

The most important tools in fighting tax evasion are the exchange of data among the relevant tax authorities (country-by-country reporting or CbCR), a method already in practice, and the international coordination of transfer prices. This is one of the conclusions drawn by a study commissioned by the Foundation for Family Businesses and conducted by the Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research (ZEW).

Germany continues to fall behind in international competition. In a current comparison of 21 industrialised countries, Germany’s ranking dropped three places to 17th compared with 2018, thus achieving the worst score in the history of the Country Index for Family Businesses. The United States, Great Britain and the Netherlands claim the top positions.