This paper provides empirical evidence on the impact of family-controlled firms on corporate performance, using financial information of 47590 family firms from 2010 to 2014. From the overall sample, approximately two-third of family firms have concentrated ownership, meanwhile, the remaining one-third have dispersed and unknown ownership. With respect to generation, 76% of the family firms were in the first generation, 21% for the second generation and approximately 3% for the third generation. The main findings are that ownership structure of family firms have a positive impact on their performance. Specifically, family firms with concentrated ownership outperformed family firms with dispersed ownership; however, family firms in the 1ª generation outperform family business in the 2ª and 3ª generation. Also, aggressive incentive policy negatively affects the performance of family business for the 1ª generation and has no impact on performance for 2ª and 3ª generational firms. Unlisted family firms have lower performance than listed family firms. Lastly, medium size family businesses outperform than small and large size family businesses.

This analysis investigates how family ownership structure affects the corporate performance of Portuguese listed firms using a panel data set covering the period from 2006 to 2014. Three characteristics of family firms (such as active management, active founder or heir and second blockholder) were examined with respect to the corporate performance. The main finding is that family firms over perform non-family in term productivity and profitability. This indicates that companies that have total family control are more productive and profitable than those market favour firms that the family does not have total ownership. Specifically, family firms with active founders perform better whereas those with active heirs significantly outperform compared to family firms with passive owners or heirs. Family firms with a family member in the company as either CEO or Chairman create more value and are more profitable than non-family firms. Family firms with descendant as CEO perform better meanwhile family firms with the founder as CEO significantly outperform family firms with Outside CEO for corporate performance. Lastly, the presence of a second blockholder who owns between 5-10% of the voting right enhances the corporate performance of the family firms as it counterbalances the controlling shareholder from unnecessary behaviours.