90% of businesses are family-owned: Success tips from Oishi & Asean’s top fireworks firm

By Wilson Lee Flores (The Philippine Star), Nov 27, 2017

Research in Entrepreneur magazine shows that only one third (30 percent) of family businesses make it successfully to their second generation, while only 12 percent make it to their third generation. Those trends are also echoed by Ateneo Business School and professor Enrique “Eric” Soriano, who has cited the so-called “third generation curse” worldwide, adding that statistics show “only three percent of all family-owned corporations make it to the fourth generation.”

Three percent! How can family businesses hurdle the usual challenges, such as maintaining family unity, upholding the entrepreneurial founder’s values, forging strategic vision and carefully preparing a succession plan for the next generation to take over?

What about the continued viability and competitiveness of the family enterprise, even if family members are united and motivated?

It is interesting that different family businesses have differing strategies and styles. I recall that brilliant JG Summit Holdings, Inc. boss Lance Y. Gokongwei — son of self-made business leader John Gokongwei, Jr. and whose mother Elizabeth Yu Gokongwei is from pre-war Manila’s Yutivo hardware clan — said his family’s clear rules forbid their in-laws from participating or getting involved in their family business.

On the other hand, based on my reading of history, the still family-run Ayala Group has actually been taken over and saved several times since the 19th century by capable in-laws, such as Antonio de Ayala, the Zobels and the 20th-century business leader Joseph McMicking.