Every year in France, nearly 75,000 firms undergo a change in their governance structure, whether this involves a change in management or a change in shareholding. These transitional phases represent a pivotal moment in the life of a firm and naturally raise questions about their impact on firm performance and sustainability, as well as the role that Public policy can play in supporting these transitions.
Since the early 2000s, and following several reports from MPs / parliamentarians / members of parliament expressing concern at the relatively low level of intra-family firm transfers, successive governments have implemented a series of measures aimed at encouraging firms to remain within the family, to the detriment of other types of transfer. However, such measures would only be justified if intra-family transfers were found to have greater positive benefits than transfers to a third party, a point on which there is far from a consensus in the empirical or theoretical literature on the subject. The aim of this study is to help shed light on this debate by examining the consequences of a change in governance structure on firm performance. We examine separately the effects of a takeover by an entity external to the firm from those resulting from an intra- or extra-family change in management, and then compare the effects of these different types of transition.
