Investigating performance implications of intra-family ownership successions: Equity transfers with versus without debt creation

We relate two routes of intra-family ownership succession (i.e., succession financed with versus without debt) to post-succession financial performance. Investigating a sample of 203 privately-held family businesses, our results show that the succession-induced performance paths of the two subgroups are significantly different. When debt is used to fund the intra-family share transfer, financial performance significantly increases in the post-succession period. This phenomenon is absent when no debt is used to fund succession. We attribute the performance gap to a governance device characterising the debt-financed succession route: debt creation at succession leads to firm-level efficiency gains.