US And Sweden Have Least Stressed Family Business Owners

by Mike Godfrey, Tax-News.com, Washington

05 December 2006

The United States and Sweden are the least stressful countries in which to operate a family owned business, according to new research by the accounting firm Grant Thornton International.

The findings come from the GTI International Business Owners Survey (IBOS), which surveyed more than 3,000 mid-sized family business owners from 28 countries.

The IBOS concluded that nearly four in ten (39%) of US family business owners saw their stress levels increase or increase significantly over the past year. However, compared with the 27 other countries, only family businesses in Sweden (20%) reported a lower level of increased stress than the US.

At the other end of the scale, Grant Thornton said that the results differed dramatically, with 90% of Taiwanese family businesses seeing an increase or significant increase in stress levels, more than double the US level and up from 76% in 2005. Mainland China (84%) and the Philippines (78%) followed as the second and third highest.

On average, US family business owners took off 14 days last year, compared with a 15-day average for all family businesses around the world, the IBOS found.

French family business owners took the most holidays, taking on average 26 days leave, followed by UK, Swedish and Italian family businesses, who all took 21 days leave last year.

Conversely, Thai family businesses only took 4 days leave, Taiwan firms eight days leave, and businesses from Turkey and Botswana took 10 days leave.

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