Watch for succession stories

"In Asia, where more than 70 percent of businesses are family-owned, many of the dominant firms are in transition now, as the founders are quite elderly. If family disputes lead to decisions that damage the businesses, this could cause broader damage to these economies..."

— Dr. Joseph Fan is a finance professor and co-director of the Institute of Economics and Finance at The Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Succession at family-dominated firms is a particularly tricky question. According to one global survey in 2011, 27 percent of such businesses expect to change hands in the next five years. But 47 percent had no succession plans in place.

The sudden illness or incapacitation of a family company CEO can be a major problem if there is no succession plan in place. One of the overriding issues is whether there is a suitable candidate from within the family, or whether an outsider will be considered.

The 2011 study, “Kin in the Game,” by PricewaterhouseCoopers, found that 38 percent of family businesses surveyed had not nominated a caretaker management to step in if the CEO died suddenly before any of his children or other relatives were old enough to assume control.

A company also should welcome outsiders in management, according to many experts. “Generally, the more professionals in management there are compared with family managers, the better run the company should be,” Manesh Patel of Ernst & Young in Mumbai told the Financial Times.