Small family-owned unit – Typical
The typical business in Germany is a small family-owned unit. Any outside
shareholders are usually long-term employees or others with long-standing
personal relations with the original family. Most large businesses are publicly
held corporations with many shareholders. However, the original family owners
often retain a significant minority holding and there are still a few large
businesses closely held by only a few individuals.
Many medium-sized publicly-
listed corporations issue a different class of shares to the public (quite
frequently non-voting preferred stock) in order to give the original owners a
greater degree of control and influence than warranted by their investment.
EU Forecast
euf:ba18e:19/nws-01