A glance over the Spanish middle market (family owned companies)

Spain is a country in which, companies owned by families represents more than 57% of the total GDP.

Family owned companies employs more than 6.5 million people (67% of the active population), and supports 65% of the total goods exported.

If we filter our approach to this kind of companies taking only those that their level of incomes are from 4 m€ to 60 m€, we find a group of###-###-#### companies that generates Eur###-###-#### millions and an EBITDA of 10%.

If we want to be more selective, we can tune finer our research, choosing only those companies that have an EBITDA higher than 5% ... and this is the outcome:

So, we are in front of a kind of miracle: ###-###-#### family business with an aggregated turnover of Eur###-###-#### millions (half of the first graph), generates the same EBITDA than the first###-###-#### companies.

But even everyone in convinced over the importance of the family business, the percentage of companies that survives from the first to the second generation is terrifying: almost 50% will close down their activities ... and in the third generation only 7% of the original companies will be able to survive.

As probably you guess, the main reason for this mortality is the lack of succession in families, and this is a suitable field for entrepreneurs (young or not) who want to start their own business.