THE FAMILY BUSINESS

Smart investors would do well to keep their money “in the family—or family businesses at least,” said Mike Dolan in Reuters.com. Though companies with substantial family ownership may conjure images of cronyism and flawed succession plans, they include successful corporate behemoths like BMW, Samsung, and L’Oréal. A third of companies in the S&P 500 index and 40 percent of the 250 largest companies in France and Germany are considered family-influenced businesses. And over the past five tumultuous market years, such firms have outperformed benchmark global indices. A Credit Suisse index of 225 family-dominated firms, for instance, has outpaced the broad MSCI World index by 8 percent since August 2007. The secret? Family ownership encourages “longevity and long-term thinking.”