AIB and PwC have agreed to extend their support for DCU’s Centre for Family Business for another three years, a move which will allow the Centre to expand its support for family businesses through research, events, publications and specific initiatives.

The latest of those initiatives is the Connectivity Project, which DCU says is a peer-to-peer mentoring programme that will enable family business leaders to engage and share personal experience and learnings on specific issues of interest to family business.

The Centre points out that family businesses “form the economic and social bedrock of Irish society, accounting for more than 75% of all firms, and contributing approximately 50% of Ireland’s GDP and employment”. 

However, PwC’s Irish Family Business Survey has shown that such businesses face particular challenges to their long-term sustainability,  with just 14% of Irish family businesses having a fully documented succession plan, only 53% having a strategy fit for the digital age and 36% having family and business strategies that are not aligned.

CFB director Dr Eric Clinton said the renewed partnership will enable the centre to expand its activities to support Irish family firms. “The new Connectivity Project is a peer-to-peer mentoring programme that will initially engage 20 business leaders from the Irish, US and European business communities to provide at least ten hours of advice and consultation to one or two matched family business peers each year, and will be a new and very practical layer of support that we can offer to support family firms,” he explained.

In Association with

The centre is stepping to the plate on the succession issue next month, when the Centre's annual conference will focus on the  topic of ‘Family Dynamics in Business Succession Planning’. The conference takes place on Tuesday July 3 at  AIB Bankcentre in Dublin 4, with speakers including clinical psychologist David Coleman and the founding chair of NTR plc, Tom Roche.

Photo (l-r): Paul Hennessy of PwC, Catherine Moroney of AIB, DCU president Prof. Brian MacCraith, and Dr Eric Clinton. (Pix: Julien Behal Photography)