THE LEADING FAMILY BUSINESS IN ITALY: SOME EMPIRICAL RESULTS

The present work is the result of an investigation involving the leading family firms in Italy with the aim to understand and analyze business performances through a benchmark analysis, with the purpose of identifying the position of these firms within the sector they belong to. In particular, this analysis is intended to show that these firms usually achieve a higher level of business performances than the average data of their sector subcategory; the result of this analysis was obtained through a comparison between certain values and expressive indicators regarding the business functionalities of these examined family firms and data concerning other firms working in the same subcategory. In other terms, our aim is to prove that family firms, mostly representative as far as revenues are concerned, have a better financial performance, since there’s a close connection between their results and the family connotation.