Today we launched the seventh edition of the European Family Business Barometer in partnership with KPMG Enterprise. Our survey, which received more than 1500 contributions from family companies across all the continent, underlines how family businesses are still growing.

Key highlights:

• 73% of respondents are confident about the future of their companies, while 19.5% are neutral and only 6.04% have a negative outlook;
• While overall confidence is up in Europe, the UK was an exception with a clear drop in confidence (from 83% in 2017 to 68% this year) with Brexit being a likely cause; 
• 64% of the respondents indicated an increase in turnover over the past 12 months, while only 11% reported a reduction.
• The top priorities for the next two-year period are improving profitability (49%), increasing turnover (38%) and attracting new talent (27%).
• 53% of respondents reported the war for talent as being their biggest concern, while it was 43% in 2017 and 37% in 2016. The other main challenges are political uncertainty (36%) and increased the cost of labour (36%).
• International expansion has taken a backseat: only 36% of respondents increased their activities over the past year, while it was 44% in 2017 and 65% in 2016.