According to a report by Grant Thornton, prepared in cooperation with the Warsaw Stock Exchange (WSE), family firms account for 40 % of all companies listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange (WSE).

According to the latest update of the family-owned companies’ segment, conducted by the Warsaw Stock Exchange at the end of July 2023, 180 family-owned companies were listed on WSE, but due to the exclusion of financial institutions, foreign companies, and companies whose listings have been suspended, 166 family-owned companies were included in the analysis. This is 40 % of the companies making up the Warsaw trading floor.

The Warsaw Stock Exchange defines family companies as entities where the person who founded or took over the company, together with his or her relatives and descendants, hold at least 25 % of the votes at the company’s general meeting of shareholders.

‘The research confirms that shares in family businesses can be a good choice for investors looking for stable, long-term investments, as their valuations are less susceptible to fluctuations related to geopolitical turmoil and gain over time’, said managing partner in the Advisory Department at Grant Thornton Dariusz Bednarski.

Dariusz Bednarski noted that family foundations are appearing in the shareholdings of family-owned companies, even though the legislation for this only recently came into force.

‘This clearly indicates that shareholders representing families take a thoughtful approach to the topic of succession, choosing a form that limits the fragmentation of shareholding among successors’, added Bednarski.

In terms of the number of family companies listed on the WSE, the largest number is in the Mazovia region. There are 54 companies of this type, i.e. almost one in three family businesses in Poland. In the other three voivodeships of Wielkopolskie, Lubuskie and Podlaskie regions family companies constitute the vast majority, i.e. more than three quarters of all companies listed on the WSE in a given region.

Adrian Andrzejewski