Family-owned businesses with succession issues are a classic source of buy-outs, but recent research shows most of them are not keen to take the buy-out route, even in the UK.

Statistics show Europe has plenty of private companies big enough to buy (see table). Panikkos Poutziouris, a visiting fellow at the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology who has made a special study of family businesses, says two-thirds of private companies are family-owned, and one in three of these is facing a succession issue.