Dublin City University has announced a new sponsor for the DCU National Centre for Family Business. The Irish commercial law firm Beauchamps will join AIB and PwC to extend their support for the Centre to 2021. This support will enable the Centre to expand its work to support Irish family businesses through research, events, publications and a new Connectivity Project, a peer-to-peer mentoring programme that will enable family business leaders to engage and share personal experience and learnings on specific issues of interest to family business.
Family businesses form the economic and social bedrock of Irish society, accounting for more than 75% of all firms, as well as contributing approximately 50% of Ireland’s GDP and employment. However, PwC’s Irish Family Business Survey has shown that Irish family businesses face a particular set of challenges to their long-term sustainability, with just 14% of Irish family businesses having a fully documented succession plan, only 53% having a strategy fit for the digital age and 36% having family and business strategies that are not aligned.
Since its establishment in 2013, DCU’s National Centre for Family Business has established a reputation as a hub of expertise and advice, helping Irish family firms to address issues such as generational succession, integration of family and non-family talent, inheritance and estate planning, growth and exports, and the role of entrepreneurship and innovation in family business success. The Centre has engaged with over 1,500 family firms through three national conferences and other events since 2013 and has participated in the worldwide Successful Transgenerational Entrepreneurial Practices (STEP) project, enabling Irish family firms to draw on international research and practice insights.
Beauchamps support will enable the Centre to continue to conduct annual surveys of Irish family businesses, to work with the Central Statistics Office to identify the economic contribution of family businesses to regional development, GDP and employment, to publish a quarterly e-zine read by over 2,600 family business practitioners and to host a programme of events that will include an annual national conference and CFB Road Show in Cork, Limerick and Galway.
Speaking on the announcement of the renewed partnership, Dr Eric Clinton, Director of the DCU Centre for Family Business described how the partnership will enable the Centre to expand its activities to support Irish family firms over the next three years: “We are very excited that Beauchamps support will enable the Centre to further our ongoing research and outreach activities which helps us to encourage family business leaders to engage and share personal experience and learnings on specific issues of interest to family business. This partnership will allow the Centre to further develop new and very practical layers of support to Irish family firms.”
John White, Managing Partner of Beauchamps, said: “Supporting continued growth in the family business community is central to what we do at Beauchamps. The management and operation of a family business raises unique legal and strategic challenges. Through our work with generations of Ireland’s leading family businesses we see, at first hand, the enormous contribution they make to the economy. We wholeheartedly support the Centre’s vision to achieve national and international recognition as a Centre of world-class expertise and its role in providing advice for family businesses in Ireland and abroad. This collaboration will allow us to share unique research and practical insights with our clients, which will equip them with the resources they need to evolve and prosper.”
1st November 2018
