The family is the bedrock of society, a bastion of comfort and security in our lives. Pulitzer prize-winning authors Ariel and Will Durant once said that "the family is the nucleus of civilization". And, believe it or not, families are a fundamentally important cornerstone of the economy, too.
"Family business may conjure up thoughts of small father-and-son firms. But family businesses form a backbone running right through the economy," says Grant Gordon, director general of the Institute for Family Business (IFB), one of a network of similar organisations supporting family enterprise around the globe. There are more than 3m family firms in the UK, making up a third of all businesses, employing 9.5m people and accounting for around 38 per cent of the UK's private sector GDP.
Admittedly, says Mr Gordon, the vast majority of family businesses are small-to-medium-sized enterprises. But the IFB estimates that there are over 1,000 family-controlled firms in the UK with more than 250 employees. A fair handful of these businesses are traded on the London Stock Exchange and, as we'll show, many of them have proved a good place to have invested your money over the years.
