Lack of heirs hitting family businesses

New Delhi: Family companies are the hidden engines of the global economy. More than 90 per cent of all companies are family companies. These include many of the world’s biggest organisations such as LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton SE in France and Samsung Electronics Co. in South Korea, Bloomberg reported.

A third of companies in Standard & Poor’s 500 index and 40 per cent of the largest companies in France and Germany have a strong family element, the report said. Yet thanks to a combination of demographics and changing social mores, many family firms now face the ultimate threat to their survival: a shortage of heirs.