Kept in the Family: Swiss Firms That Hand Over Within the Family Are Rarely Sold

01More than 2,000 a year, and steady

We read 1.3 million board-change notices of AGs and GmbHs published since 2016 and found 21,139 family handovers from 2017 to 25 September 2026, and 22,286 family entries. The number of handovers rose from 1,881 in 2017 to 2,474 in 2025, but so did board changes overall. Relative to all board changes, the rate has stayed between 21 and 25 per 1,000 every year. There is no sign of a wave of family successions; there is a steady flow.

Two in three handovers are in AGs (13,925), one in three in GmbHs (7,214). In 57% of them the person who leaves was the chair, the managing director, a partner or the owner. In 3,570 GmbH handovers the notice shows the capital units themselves passing to the family member.

Family handovers per 1,000 board changes

AGs and GmbHs; a handover = a person leaves and a different person with the same surname joins in the same SOGC notice. Label: number of handovers.

02After a family handover, a sale becomes far less likely

We followed 18,720 handovers from 2017 to 2025 and compared each with up to three companies that had a board change of the same shape (someone left, a new person was entered) in the same month, the same canton and the same legal form, with no family event in their history. We counted a company as sold when it was absorbed into another company by merger or became the target of an arm's-length deal.

Within one year of the handover, 0.9% were sold against 1.9% of the matched companies; within five years 4.8% against 8.2%; within seven years 6.7% against 11.2%. Companies wound up at similar, low rates in both groups (0.5% and 0.6% within seven years), so the difference is not that family firms disappear in other ways. They stay independent.

Share of companies sold, years after the event

Sold = absorbed by merger into another company, or target of an arm's-length deal. Control: companies with a board change of the same shape (a person out, a new person in) in the same month, canton and legal form, and no family event.

03The effect holds in every cut

The gap does not depend on which handovers we look at. It holds for handovers to a person a generation younger and for those between spouses or siblings (both about ×0.6 at five years). It is stronger when the person leaving was the chair or managing director (×0.46), and strongest in owner-managed GmbHs where the capital itself passed on: 1.2% sold within five years against 2.8%.

Two checks rule out the obvious objections. Removing the 100 most common surnames, where two unrelated people could share a name, leaves the result unchanged (×0.54 at five years). And comparing owner-managed GmbHs only with owner-managed GmbHs removes the subsidiaries of corporate groups, which merge often, from the control group; the gap gets wider, not narrower.

Sold within five years, by type of handover

Same control group throughout; owner-managed GmbHs are compared with owner-managed GmbHs.

04Mostly spouses and siblings, not a new generation

The register gives no ages, but first names carry them. The Federal Statistical Office publishes how many Swiss residents of each birth year carry each first name. Using the median birth year of each name, only 34% of handovers go to a person whose name is at least 15 years younger than that of the person leaving. In 38% there is no age gap at all. The median gap is six years.

Many family handovers are therefore a seat passing between spouses or siblings: a spouse who held a formal board seat leaves and the partner takes it, or a brother replaces a sister. For a buyer the distinction matters less than it seems: both kinds of handover lower the chance of a sale by about the same amount.

05Daughters: one successor in five

Among the 6,761 handovers to a person a generation younger, 22% of the successors whose name indicates a sex are women. The share was 19.9% in 2017, 23.1% in 2025 and 26.4% in 2026 so far; it moves from year to year, but the direction is upward. Most next-generation handovers are from a man to a man (3,873), then from a man to a woman (989), from a woman to a man (890) and from a woman to a woman (189).

Across all handovers, women are 23.6% of the incoming and 25.8% of the outgoing family members.

Share of women among next-generation successors

Handovers where the incoming person's first name is at least 15 years younger than the outgoing one's, by the BFS median birth year of residents with that name; gender assigned when at least 90% of Swiss residents with the name are one sex.

06Valais, Bern and Jura hand over the most

From 2021 to 2025 the canton of Valais recorded 78.8 family handovers per 1,000 AGs and GmbHs with a board change, followed by Bern (71.0), Jura (67.1), Graubünden (66.3) and Uri (65.8). Zug (23.4), Appenzell Innerrhoden (34.5), Basel-Stadt (38.8) and Schwyz (39.8) had the fewest; Zurich stood at 43.3.

Zug's low figure fits what our study of seat transfers found: most of its companies are run by people who live in another canton, and many are holding or group companies rather than family firms. Geneva, Vaud, Neuchâtel and Fribourg are not ranked, because they publish most board changes as free text, which we read less completely.

Family handovers by canton

Handovers 2021–2025 per 1,000 AGs and GmbHs with a board change in the same years. Grey: Geneva, Vaud, Neuchâtel and Fribourg publish most board changes as prose, of which we read fewer than 60%, so they are not ranked (they are included in all national figures).

07What this means for buyers

For anyone looking for Swiss SMEs to acquire, the register now offers a negative screen. A company that has just placed a family member on the board is about 40% less likely to be sold in the next seven years than a comparable company; one where a family member has joined while the elder generation stays is about 60% less likely. About 4,500 companies a year show one of these signs. Approaching them with an offer is not pointless, but the odds are against it.

The opposite signal is weaker but real. In 18% of handovers the family leaves the board again within seven years, and those companies are sold within the following two years 1.6 times as often as matched companies. A handover that does not hold is a moment to call.

A family entry is also an early sign of a later handover: in 10% of cases the full handover follows within seven years.

Download the data

Yearly series, canton rates, backtest curves by group and the next-generation gender series, as CSV.

Methodology

Population

Every board-change notice (mutation type 'change of organs') of an AG or GmbH in the SOGC from 1 January 2016 to 25 September 2026: 1.3 million notices. Excluded: companies in liquidation, notices in which a liquidator, commissioner, administrator or auditor enters, sole proprietorships, associations and foundations. Series from 2017; the 2016 archive publishes many notices twice. Each company, surname and event type is counted once, at its first publication.

Measures

Persons are read from the register's own format: "Surname, Given names, of <origin> or <nationality>, in <residence>, <role>" in German and Italian notices and in Jura; French-language notices from Geneva, Vaud, Neuchâtel, Fribourg and Valais are read from prose ("X is no longer…", "the signature of X is struck out", "Name Given, of <origin>, in <residence>"). A family handover: a person leaves and a different person with the same surname is entered in the same notice. A family entry: a person is entered whose surname is part of the company name and whose first name is not, with no same-surname departure. Gender and generation are inferred from first names with the BFS statistics of Swiss residents by first name and birth year (2024): a name is assigned a sex when at least 90% of its holders are one sex, and a birth year equal to its holders' median.

Backtest

Handovers from January 2017 to September 2025, each compared with up to three companies that had a board change in the same month, canton and legal form, in which a person left and a new person was entered, with no family event in the archive and the same exclusions. Outcomes are counted from 90 days after the event and followed up to seven years; the share at year k uses only events with at least k years of follow-up. Sold: absorbed into another company by merger, or target of a deal in the ValIndex deal database that is not intragroup. A first version of the backtest used unfiltered control companies, many of which were entering liquidation; it overstated the difference in wind-ups and was discarded.

Sources

Swiss Official Gazette of Commerce (SOGC/SHAB); Federal Statistical Office, first names of the permanent resident population by year of birth (2024); ValIndex deal database.

Limits

The register shows the board, not the shareholders of an AG: a family handover of the board seat can go with or without a transfer of shares, and share sales of AGs are not published, so the sale rates are lower bounds for both groups alike. Two people with the same surname may be unrelated; the results hold without the 100 most frequent surnames. Our reading of French-language prose is less complete (about half of notices, against 63–92% in the other cantons), so Romandy is under-represented in the counts and not ranked by canton. Names give probabilities, not facts, about a person's sex and age.