Impact of family ownership, management, and generations on IPO underpricing and long-run performance

Family-controlled firms are a unique form of business because of the special nature of its ownership structure, management style, and financing needs. Moreover, these firms face difficulty in achieving a balanced mix of available financing alternatives (i.e., debt and equity), and this mix has a direct impact on the firms’ profitability, risk, and value. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to review the literature on how family involvement in business via ownership, management, and control affects capital structure decisions. The review showed that in a comparison with nonfamily businesses, family-controlled firms on average have higher debt levels. Additionally, family ownership is positively associated with debt financing, and the participation of family members in a firm’s top management leads to an increase in the firm’s overall debt level. Insights generated from the current study highlight the critical influence of family involvement in business on key financial policies such as capital structure decisions.

The authors investigate the question of whet her qualitative characteristics are likely to explain the survival of family firms in case of financial distress and whether these variables improve the explanatory power of quantitative variables in clarifying the different probability of distress between family and non-family firms. They focus their attention on the impact of the controlling owner and, using the Socioemotional Wealth theory (SEW), study the role of the family involvement in mitigating or accentuating the likelihood of distress. Using a dataset of 1,137 Italian family and non-family firms during 2004–2013, the authors found that family firms are significantly less likely to incur distress than non-family firms. The board dimension and the number of family members on board affect the probability of distress even controlling for some firm risk characteristics such as beta and ROA volatility, and there is also evidence of a gender mitigating effect in case of a female CEO.

This study explores the association between family influence in firms and stock market returns in Germany, a country with a less investor-friendly corporate governance system where shareholders cannot directly influence top managers. The study forms portfolios of firms with and without the influence of families as shareholders or members of the firm’s legal bodies. The models estimate portfolio returns from 2003-2013 using a four-factor model. Results suggest that corporate governance is highly correlated with stock returns in Germany. Specifically, they document a significant relationship between family influence and firm valuation. Firms with stronger family influence via voting rights and board-participation are found to have a higher firm value (annualized excess return: 0.48%-6.00%). The study interprets this to mean that families may improve a firm’s internal corporate governance, as their strong motivation and ability to become actively engaged in a firm’s daily operations or to assume a monitoring role distinguishes them from other corporate blockholders. The results add to those of an increasing number of publications finding a positive association between strong family governance and performance. They contribute to a year-long scholarly exploration of performance differences among family and non-family businesses, mainly by defining the former by mere ownership. The study combines a large set of governance provisions into a novel, transparent, and replicable index of family involvement and then estimates the empirical relation with market performance. The index captures influence via shareholder voting rights, considers direct influence of owners on day-to-day operations, and controls for indirect influence via supervisory board.

Acknowledgment
The authors acknowledge support by the Open Access Publication Funds of the HTWK Leipzig.