Hoppenstedt which is a provider of business information has revealed some alarming facts after scanning their data bases on managers. Thus, 4500 German family-owned companies are currently in need of a new manager given that their current managers are 65 years of age or older. From a mathematical point of view this means that 10% of all family-owned companies will have to hand over to a new manager.
Apart from company owners top management is overaged too: More than 7700 top managers in family-owned companies are older than 60.
However, the problem is not limited to family-owned companies. More than 39.000 top managers in companies of any size have surpassed the age of 65. About 67.500 top managers in German companies with more than ten employees or an annual turnover of more than 1 million Euros are at least 60 years of age.
The IfM institute for research on SMEs recently published a study according to which each year 5900 German companies have to be liquidated because no management successor can be found. This leads to a loss of more than 33.000 jobs each year. Nexxt-change which is Germany’s most important forum for company succession provides support in finding a successor in due time. The Federal Ministry for economic affairs and the Association of German chambers of industry and trade are two of those who initiated this forum.
The Hoppenstedt figures are based on data from manager databases containing e.g. the birth dates of executive managers of 230.000 operating German companies. 