Mixing family with business: A study of Thai business groups and
the families behind them
Journal of Financial Economics, 88 (3):
466-498 (2008)Аннотация
How does the structure of the families behind business groups affect
the group's organization, governance, and performance? We construct
a unique dataset of family trees and business groups for 93 of the
largest business families in Thailand. We find a strong positive
association between family size and family involvement in the ownership
and control of the family businesses. The founders' sons play a central
role in both ownership and board membership, especially when the
founder of the group is dead. Greater involvement by sons is also
associated with lower firm-level performance, especially when the
founder is dead. One hypothesis that emerges from our analysis is
that part of the decay of family-run groups over time is due to the
dilution of ownership and control across a set of equally powerful
descendants of the founder, which creates a "race to the bottom"
in tunneling resources out of the group firms. © 2008 Elsevier B.V.
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