The Impact of CEO Characteristics on the Financial Performance of Family Businesses Listed in the Euronext Exchange

Abstract

This paper identifies the CEO characteristics that have an impact on the performance of family businesses listed in the Euronext in the post-COVID 19 period. CEO characteristics are evaluated on two dimensions, i.e., personal characteristics and corporate governance mechanisms. A sample of 137 firm-year observations from Portugal, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Ireland, France, and Belgium was chosen. CEO attributes of age, gender, education, and family membership were combined with corporate governance mechanisms of ownership concentration, CEO duality, CEO directorships, and CEO tenure, to predict return on assets and return on equity, using OLS regression. GMM estimation and Two-Stage Least Squares were employed to establish the robustness of the results. Among CEO personal characteristics, CEO family membership has a positive impact on return on assets, and a positive impact on return on equity. Among corporate governance mechanisms, CEO duality had a negative impact on return on assets, and a negative impact on return on equity. CEO ownership, and CEO tenure had a positive impact on return on assets, and a positive impact on return on equity. This paper’s value lies in its evaluation of the under-researched area of family businesses of Euronext-listed firms. It can be used by family businesses in the region, for the selection and training of CEOs to fulfill the goal of achieving superior financial performance.