The role of family businesses within German Company Mergers and Acquisitions for the years 2000-2020

If companies, including family businesses, want to increase their market share or diversify their business in general, they have two opportunities: build from scratch or acquire or merge with another, already established business. Germany is one of the countries with the biggest Mergers and Acquisitions volume worldwide. The aim of this work is to identify the role of family businesses in the German Mergers and Acquisitions market in the period between 2000 and 2020. The results reveal, that family businesses played a small role in the period between 2000 and 2020 in the Mergers and Acquisitions market. Family businesses acquiring or merging with other family businesses are unusual. It seems that the larger a family business grows, the more active it becomes in Mergers and Acquisitions. If a family owns several businesses, they tend to sell them only at a high market price, but not in response to challenging economic situations.