Carmen Riu was on a flight back to her base in Majorca recently when she spied two fellow chief executives also from the Spanish island: the heads of Air Europa and Sampol. Nothing noteworthy in that – except that all three are women and the heads of family-owned companies in the otherwise male-dominated industries of tourism, air travel and construction. Mrs Riu, co-head and joint owner of Riu Hotels & Resorts for 10 years, says both María José Hidalgo at Air Europa and María del Carmen Sampol at Sampol had been chosen in spite of being the only daughters in families full of men: “The father at Sampol said to me once: ‘Hombre, it is good to see your example because I know now my daughter can do it too’.”
Female executives are rare among listed companies in Europe, a situation that will surely come up at the Women’s Forum in Deauville, France, which starts today. Peter Löscher, the CEO of Siemens who this year criticised the German conglomerate for being “too male”, says it is “a disgrace” that out of more than 190 management board members in the Dax-30 grouping of top German companies, only one is a woman – Bettina von Oesterreich, chief risk officer of Hypo Real Estate.
Even in Norway, where 40 per cent of board directors are female, there is a far lower percentage of women in the ranks of top management, according to IE Business School in Madrid. But Celia de Anca, director of IE’s centre for diversity, says the situation is different at family companies like Mrs Riu’s. “Whenever a company is family-owned there are a lot of women involved. This has tended to be the case in continental Europe, with many examples from Santander [in Spain] to France and Germany.” They range from Ana Patricia Botín, head of Banesto, a bank owned by Santander, to Liz Mohn and Johanna Quandt, members of families that control Europe’s largest media group (Bertelsmann) and the world’s largest luxury carmaker (BMW), respectively.
That bodes well for family companies in the current economic crisis as their focus on the long term pays off. Mrs Riu says: “Being a CEO owner has an advantage over non-CEO owners: it [concerns] the vision of the long term. When you are the owner and want to pass it on to your children, focusing on the long term is better than if you are concentrating only on short-term profits.”
Caroline Marston, managing director of Marston Properties in the UK, agrees: “Having a long-term focus is definitely an advantage...But most important is the understanding.” The 46-year-old mother of two adds: “When you have young children you need support and understanding. I don’t think I would have got this far if I wasn’t in a family company.”
Mrs Riu, talking in her office just off the Playa del Palma in Majorca, says there are three broad reasons why life as a female executive is easier in a family company. One is the immersion family members have had in the company from an early age: “Many companies are like ours – we talk about the company from childhood. We talked about it at lunch and dinner. It was good because my brother [co-CEO and owner] and I learnt a lot while eating.”
The second reason relates to her mother’s own example: “You see as a daughter how your mother works and looks after the family, her system of organisation.”
Last, there is increasingly a need to involve the women of a family, both as families get smaller and women in some countries such as Spain become generally more educated than men.
Berthold Leibinger, former CEO of Trumpf, Europe’s biggest machine tool maker, said continuity was important in choosing his daughter Nicola Leibinger-Kamüller, when she was appointed to succeed him three years ago: “Keeping it in the family is important because I have known my successor for 45 years. I know how she thinks and she knows how I think.”
Both Ms Marston and Mrs Riu say family companies offer a more flexible workplace for women. Ms Marston says: “If one of my children is sick I am going to drop everything and rearrange things.” Mrs Riu, with three grown-up children, adds: “It doesn’t mean I work fewer hours but, for example, when my youngest was very ill when she was young I had time for her.”
Another advantage in family companies that both Mrs Riu and Ms Marston identify is a lack of the cliques that characterise many listed companies and make it hard for women to progress. Ms Marston says: “I haven’t had any of the politics that you have in a listed company.” Mrs Riu says the selcetion of executives in family companies is fairer: “It is more objective.” But she also points out other hurdles, such as cultural problems that can hinder the progress of women in a family company just as much as elsewhere. Most of Riu’s hotel managers are women but sending them abroad is tricky, she says, either because local employees won’t accept them or because they find it hard to uproot their families.
Nevertheless, even if male-dominated networks are absent, there are always family dynamics. After she was made chief executive, Ms Leibinger-Kamüller told the Financial Times: “We’re a team. I hope I won’t have to boss them around, though my brother would always say I’m the older sister and my husband would complain I’m the one in charge.” Ms Marston was unsure what to call her older relatives in board meetings. She has made the company structure more formal, with a constitution for family members.
Most of all, what characterises these female CEO-owners is their commitment. Mrs Riu says she has trained her children to be good owners – “I don’t want them in Maseratis, with spectacular rubies” – and she highlights the closeness of her family with the business. She lives next door to her brother and his family and recalls that after the birth of her first son: “I lived very close to the offices so I could go into the office and then return home to nurse him.”
Ms Marston, too, is keen that her children experience life outside the company: “I’d rather they did something else first. Once you are in it, you are in it.”