Three Spanish firms were near the top of the latest Family Business Index

INDITEX, Mercadona and El Corte Ingles were listed amongst the world’s 120 largest family-owned firms.

Multinational auditors EY and Switzerland-based St Gallen University, who publish their Family Business Index every two years, have placed the three Spanish companies high on their list.

Inditex, which owns the Zara, Pull and other labels, was ranked in 51st place in the latest edition, followed by supermarket chain Mercadona (54) and the El Corte Ingles department stores (117).

Eight other Spanish companies, Acciona, Gestamp, Ferrovial, Grifols, Catalana Occidente, Antolin-Irausa, Prosegur y Tecnicas Reunidas were named in the Index’s 500-strong list.

Between them, these 11 companies, all family-owned, had a turnover of €120 billion, and employed a total of 445,000 people.  Worldwide, family businesses earned more than €8 trillion and provided jobs for 24.5 million people, a 10 per cent increase on the 2021 index.

“According to the International Monetary Fund, the global economy grew by 6 per cent in 2021, and is forecast to grow by 3 2.7 per cent in 2023,” said EY’s Helena Robertsson.

“This shows that family enterprises have been growing at nearly twice the rate of advanced economies and around one and a half times the rate of emerging market and developing economies.”

The company’s Global Family Enterprise leader stressed the “huge” contribution of the world’s largest 500 family enterprises to the world economy, dominated by Europe, the Middle East, India and Africa..

“In fact, their contribution is so significant that if they were a national economy, they would be the third largest among the club of 19 ‘trillion-dollar economies^’ that exist in the world, after the US and China,” she said.

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