The data is in! See what family owned businesses are saying about today’s challenges and opportunities.
Family enterprises form the backbone of global commerce and community wealth. In the United States alone, they account for nearly two-thirds of employment and an estimated 60% of GDP. Yet despite their outsized role in wealth creation and social impact, family owned businesses remain uniquely vulnerable.
The statistics tell a sobering story: only 30% survive to the second generation, 12% to the third, and a mere 3% to the fourth. These figures do not reflect weak products or poor leadership. They reveal hidden risks that, if left unaddressed, can threaten both the business and the family behind it.
What makes these risks particularly dangerous is their invisibility. Families often focus on growth and operations while neglecting structural vulnerabilities of a more interpersonal nature. Informal governance feels sufficient until conflict arises. Succession appears straightforward until a health crisis exposes the absence of a plan. Wealth concentration appears efficient until a market shock destabilizes both the company and the family’s balance sheet. Estate and tax planning are postponed until death or incapacity forces hurried decisions. And interpersonal tensions, often masked by politeness, can quietly erode trust until they erupt into disputes that fracture families and enterprises alike.
Sections include:
I. Governance Gaps: When Informality Becomes Liability
II. Succession Blind Spots: Assuming the Next Generation is Ready
III. Concentration Risk: “All Our Wealth is in the Business”
IV. Estate & Tax Planning Landmines
V. Interpersonal Dynamics & Silent Stakeholders
Read the full whitepaper. Click here now.
About Bank OZK
Bank OZK roots date back to its establishment in 1903 as a small community bank in Jasper, Arkansas. However, our modern-day history began in 1979 when another small-town bank, Bank of Ozark, was purchased by our Chairman and CEO, a then 25-year-old attorney, George Gleason. At the time, the bank had only two branches, 28 employees and $28 million in assets. Since then, Bank OZK has grown to over $38 billion in assets, more than 3,000 employees and over 240 offices in nine states.
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The need for fact-based reporting of issues important to family owned businesses and protecting a lifetime of savings has never been greater. Now more than ever, successful families and family owned businesses are under fire. That's why Family Enterprise USA is passionately working to increase the awareness of issues important to family owned businesses built on hard work, while continuing to strengthen our presence on Capitol Hill. The issues we fight for or against with Congress in Washington DC include high income tax rates, possible elimination of valuation discounts, increase in capital gains tax, enactment of a wealth tax, and the continued burden of the gift tax, estate tax and generation skipping tax.
Family Enterprise USA promotes generationally owned family business creation, growth, viability, and sustainability by advocating for family businesses and their lifetime of savings with Congress in Washington DC. Since 2007, Family Enterprise USA has represented and celebrated all sizes, professions and industries of family-owned enterprises and multi-generational employers. It is a bi-partisan 501.c3 organization. Family foundations can donate.
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