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Moreover, family firms in France have performed quite well for shareholders. An index of such companies compiled by a Paris brokerage, Oddo & Cie, continuously outperformed the Paris market in the 10 years from 1991 to 2001, with the stock of family firms rising by 446%, compared to 233% for the stock of 250 of France's largest companies. Family businesses tend to be more profitable than others over the longer term, in part because they aren't as fixated on short-term performance and are better able to weather downturns.
For all Europe's business families, succession is the biggest challenge. By some counts, only 1 in 3 family firms survives the transition from the founding generation to the next.
At some of the most established and successful family firms, the heirs have switched from an active-management to a passive-investor role. Consider Liliane Bettencourt, 80, who manages her family's $11 billion stake in L'Oreal cosmetics--founded by her father in 1907--through a holding company. She and her daughter Francoise, 49, sit on the L'Oreal board, but no other family member works at the firm. When Freddie Heineken died last year, control of his brewing colossus passed to his daughter and sole heir, Charlene de Carvalho Heineken, 48. She lives in London with her banker husband and their five young children, and she has no involvement with day-to-day operations. Karl and Theo Albrecht, the secretive German brothers who rank as the richest people in Europe, are withdrawing from the management of their firm, discount retailer Aldi. Sweden's Ingvar Kamprad, who created the IKEA furniture chain, has retired to a Swiss lakeside resort, leaving ownership of his empire to a foundation--and keeping everyone guessing whether any of his three sons will take over the business.
The investor role isn't always passive; sometimes it can be passive-aggressive, as the Quandt family has demonstrated. Herbert Quandt acquired a controlling stake in automaker BMW in 1959, when it was in dire straits. His heirs today own 47% of BMW's stock. The children of Quandt's third marriage, Stefan, 36, and Susanne, 40, sit on BMW's supervisory board. In 1999, angered by continuing losses at the automaker's Rover subsidiary in Britain, they ousted CEO Bernd Pischetsrieder in a boardroom coup. In Hamburg, the fate of Beiersdorf (Nivea skin cream) has been uncertain for months because of quarrels in the Herz family, which owns a 30% stake. The biggest shareholder, German insurer Allianz, is looking to sell its 44% stake, perhaps to Procter & Gamble. But the five Herz heirs to their father's coffee fortune can't agree on whether to increase their stake in Beiersdorf or to sell it.