CORPUS COLLOSUM LEARNING PVT LTD

Don't Leave It To The Children
Starting, Building And Sustaining A Family Business
Alan Crosbie
 

Over the last few years, family business has been ridden with conflict—even murder. We hear stories of super-rich parents at the throats of their children, brothers suing sisters, and every other conceivable permutation of family conflict.

How important are family businesses? And why do so many of them go poisonously wrong?

The answer is that they are very important indeed. Seventy percent of companies in the world are family businesses. Yet most family businesses don't survive past the first generation, and only 6 percent last to the third generation. They fail, according to the author, for infinitely predictable—and preventable reasons. And the author should know.

Alan Crosbie comes from one of Ireland's best-known and most successful business families. The Crosbies own Thomas Crosbie Holdings Ltd, a holding company for Examiner Publications Ltd, and other provincial newspapers around Ireland. They are also part-owners of two radio stations and have various property interests.

Following his unspoken destiny, Alan Crosbie took over Examiner Publications in 1993, when the fortunes of the company's two newspapers, the daily Examiner and the Evening Echo, were in decline. He turned it around and renamed the newspaper to reflect its national aspirations. Today it is the Irish Examiner.

Alan Crosbie has done extensive study into family businesses with MBA groups in the USA and Europe and has lectured widely on the topic. He has also served as President of the European Newspaper Publishers' Association. Married, with four children, he has strong views about what his children should and should not expect from the family business.

ISBN 81-89197-04-5, 14cm x 21.5cm,
192 Pgs, Softcover, Rs.195