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I think it's fine in a true "family business" e.g. you wholly own a hardware store or a restaurant and you have your family working there and eventually you hand it off to your children (assuming they want it).

In large public companies or institutions that have shareholders or state owners then it's unfair for an executive or senior administrator to carve out a job for a family member. He's giving them something he doesn't own, unlike in the family business example.




What fraction of ownership would make it okay?

100% ? 50% ? Something in the middle?


50% + 1 share.


Even in the family business, there should be limits. What if the family business becomesand empire worth >20% of a contries GDP - e.g. Samsung. It is absolutely not reasonable to pass this amount of wealth to children of the founder.


Samsung is not a family business in the legal sense of the term: it has shareholders and is thus nominally accountable to the public.


Samsung is a public company no? It's not family-owned as far as I can see.


This is correct money-wise. Samsung Group's market cap is around $400-500 billion, while its chairman (the family head) is estimated to be worth $10-15 billion.

It's not as correct decision-making influence-wise. The power balance of "family vs remaining shareholders" is different from what would be assumed purely based on those numbers.

It can be said that Samsung C&T is the actual head subsidiary/control vehicle through which the other subsidiaries are run at the top level, and the family is easily the biggest shareholder in C&T.

The KOSPI, which is what the subsidiaries are listed on (the "group" is not listed), is seen as a bit of a joke by both foreign and domestic investors for that reason. Besides its obvious downsides, it does have upsides as well - the "sacrifice everything for the short-term stock price" that is the norm in the US is less common in Korea for this reason. Corporations work differently.


Shareholders can put pressure on the board to fire the exrcutive. If they don't, that means they're fine with the situation.


As a shareholder in many companies, I cannot put pressure on a board, and I'm mostly unaware of how they are internally managed.


Shareholders are basically fine with fraud as long a they benefit in the end .




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