With a new Baby Windsor gladdening the hearts of royalists, how timely that researchers at Standard & Poor’s, (S&P) the debt ratings merchant, should extol the virtues of dynastic rule and family firms.

在刚刚出世的温莎(Windsor)小王子让保皇派欢欣鼓舞之际，债券评级机构标准普尔(S&P)的研究人员对王室规矩和家族企业优点的歌颂显得非常及时。

One may not be able to choose one’s family, but in business that may be a good thing, suggests S&P.

标普研究表明，人们可能无法选择自己的出身，但在企业界，身在家族企业可能是件好事。

What a contrast to the Roundhead doctrine – pre-financial crisis – that family ownership stifled innovation, and family businesses were unproductive, low margin, slow to recognise threats and opportunities and cavalier in their disregard for markets.

这与金融危机之前“圆头党”(Roundhead，指反对君主的人士，译者注)的信条形成了特别明显的对比。他们认为，家族所有制遏制了创新，同时家族企业生产率低下，利润率较低，识别威胁和机会的速度缓慢，而且相当傲慢，漠视市常

Roundhead academics argued that combining ownership and control allowed a concentration of share-owning family members to exchange profits for rents. Those in the service of capital markets deplored the conservatism that stopped family firms from turning to equity markets and jazzing up their balance sheets with debt. That was then.

“圆头党”学者辩称，所有权与管理权合二为一让很多拥有股权的家族成员用企业利润来寻租。那些服务于资本市场的人对这种保守看法予以谴责，这种看法曾妨碍家族企业上市以及利用债务扩充资产负债表。这种情况已成为过去。

Now royalism is in the ascendancy and balance sheet conservatism is seen as A Good Thing. According to S&P, the family-owned businesses it studied benefited from longer-term horizons and were on average more stable and better managed than other companies. Family-owned businesses – or Fobs for want of a better acronym – don’t spend a lot of money when markets turn up but nor do they immediately cut investment or mothball factories when economies turn down. Fobs are better credit risks, it says.

如今，保皇主义正处于优势地位，在资产负债表方面奉行保守主义被视为一件好事。标普表示，作为其研究对象的家族企业受益于较长线的视野，它们与其他企业相比，通常经营更稳健，管理也更完善。在市场行情转好时，家族企业不会支出大笔开销，但在经济低迷时，它们也不会马上削减投资或关闭工厂。标普表示，家族企业的信用风险较低。

S&P is not alone. Last year, Deutsche Bank concluded family ownership had been a boon to the big dynastic businesses – of which there are a lot in Germany – that recovered so quickly and well from the financial crisis. At the same time, a paper from the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) argued that, between 1997 and 2009, the financial performance of Fobs across the world “exceeds that of traditional public companies” over the long term, outperforming during downturns even if they lag behind in upswings.

标普的研究结果并非独一无二。去年，德意志银行(Deutsche Bank)总结称，家族所有制对于活力充沛的大企业是件好事（德国有很多此类企业），它们非常迅速且顺利地摆脱了金融危机的影响。同时，波士顿咨询集团(BCG)的一篇报告称，1997年至2009年，全球家族企业的长期财务表现“好于传统上市企业”；在经济回升期，它们表现落后，但在经济衰退期，它们的表现优于其他企业。

Yet in Britain, companies based on kinship are not viewed with the same respect they get elsewhere in Europe, and there are far fewer of them. About 4 per cent of UK companies are Fobs – lower than almost any other EU state, according to S&P. Contrast that with the rest of the world where more than a third of companies with sales of more than $1bn are controlled by people who are genetically linked, at least according to BCG.

但在英国，家族企业并没有像在欧洲其他国家那样受到尊重，而且数量也少得多。标普数据显示，英国企业中家族企业的比例约为4%，几乎比任何其他欧盟国家都要低。与此形成对比的是，在全球其他地区，销售额超过10亿美元的企业中家族控股企业的比例高于三分之一，至少BCG的数据这样显示。

Most British Fobs are small. There are a few well-known multinationals beyond the Bamford family’s digger business, JCB – which itself was a breakaway from a family-run machinery firm. Many of the UK’s oldest businesses started out as Fobs, but less than a handful of companies in the FTSE 100 index are still controlled or owned by one dynasty. Associated British Foods and arguably Schroders, the fund manager, are exceptions.

英国多数的家族企业规模较校除了班福德(Bamford)家族的挖掘机企业JCB（该公司已从家族管理的机械公司分立出来）以外，英国知名的跨国集团凤毛麟角。英国很多最古老的企业都始于家族企业，但在富时100（FTSE 100）指数成分股企业中，仍然由一个家族控股或所有的企业少之又少。英联食品集团(Associated British Foods)以及基金管理公司施罗德(Schroders)属于例外。

In France, 15 clans – among them Ricard and Michelin – control almost a third of the Paris Bourse.

在法国，包括保乐利加(Ricard)和米其林(Michelin)的15个家族控制着巴黎交易所(Paris Bourse)近三分之一的资产。

The antiroyalists of the UK markets view Fobs as riven by family feuds and deficient in independent, outside voices needed to counter family interests. It is assumed they are nepotistic, despotic and sclerotic.

英国市场的反保皇势力认为，家族企业因家族纠纷而被搞得四分五裂，而且缺乏外部独立的声音来抗衡家族利益。他们认为家族企业任人唯亲、专制霸道而且僵化死板。

Small Talk has plenty of anecdotes about badly run Fobs: a carpet manufacturer where valuable management time was diverted from developing much-needed exports to building playgrounds and a rare-breed sheep farm springs to mind; a failed ceramics importer that employed the family’s eldest son regardless of skill and interests and used company cash to pay for holidays and school fees; and a machinery boss who employed a colour-blind relative to run the paint shop.

Small Talk有很多有关管理糟糕的家族企业的轶闻：一家地毯制造商的重要管理时间不是用来开发亟需的出口产品，而是用来修建运动场，而且会突发奇想建设一个品种稀有的绵羊农场；一家陶瓷进口商聘用该家族的长子，不顾其能力和兴趣，还动用公司资金支付度假费用和学费，最终走向破产；一家机械企业的老板聘用色盲亲戚经营油漆店。

Philip Letts, founder of Blur, (not the pop group but an online business-to-business exchange), was born into the diary-making dynasty that made leather bound journals for two centuries until it was bought out by private equity and management. He believes Fobs work better as small companies rather than big, public companies where they can collide with outside money and interests.

Blur（不是那个流行乐队，而是一家在线B2B交易所）创始人菲利普·莱茨(Philip Letts)出生于一个制作日记本的家族，两个世纪以来该家族一直在制作皮面日记本，直到被一家私人股本公司和管理层收购。他认为，与那些可能与外部资金和利益发生冲突的大型上市企业相比，家族小企业运作起来更有效率。

Fobs can be staid, closed, defensive and riven by dynastic politics, he argues – adding that this is particularly true of older businesses. Some Fobs are “lifestyle businesses” rather than commercial businesses focused on investor returns and “succession is more about ‘the kids’ than ‘the best’”.

他表示，家族企业可能保守、封闭、具有戒备心理并充斥着家族政治，他补充称，对于历史较长的企业尤其如此。一些家族企业属于“生活方式企业”，而非致力于回报投资者的商业企业，而且“继承者更多是‘乳臭未干的年轻人’而非‘最优秀的人才’”。

On the plus side, however, Fobs are strong on fundamentals, and management can be stable and close knit, particularly in the first generations, says Mr Letts. Families, he says, become “real experts in their space” and “quality regional players” with strong and long relationships with staff, suppliers and clients.

莱茨表示：“从优点来看，家族企业在基本面具有优势，管理层可能比较稳定，而且相互关系紧密，尤其是在第一代。”他表示，家族成员会成为“所在领域真正的专家”和“高素质的区域性角色”，它们与员工、供应商和客户有着密切且长久的联系。

The lesson, then, is that no two Fobs are the same and they are not automatically worse or better than other small companies. It would certainly be a mistake to consign all Fobs to the guillotine just because their owners share the same DNA.

接下来，其中的教训是，没有任何两家家族企业是一样的，它们并非自然而然的逊于或优于其他小企业。仅仅因为所有者拥有同样的基因就把所有家族企业送上断头台，肯定是错误的。