Middle East Family Firms Focus on Corporate governance

Better corporate governance is a matter of survival for the many family companies that handle 80 per cent of non-oil GDP in the Middle East and North Africa region. The vast majority are in their second generation of owners and are facing the difficult prospect of handling succession to the third generation. “In the next ten years more than $1 trillion of businesses will pass a generation of owners. The records show that 15 per cent of businesses fail in the first transition from father to sons, and 45 per cent fail in the next from brothers to cousins,” said Badr Jafar, Founder of the Pearl Initiative at the World Economic Forum in Davos.