Biography
As a member of the AIB Centre for Finance and Business Research, Denis is a PhD candidate researching within the Small Firm Finance theme of the centre under the supervision of Dr. Sheila O’ Donohoe.
The research title is 'Financing European Family Firms: What we can learn from the Survey on Access to Finance of Enterprises'.
Prior academic award:
2011-2015 Bachelor of Business (Hons.) - Waterford Institute of Technology.
Externalising research:
Attendance at:
Central Bank of Ireland Workshop: Banking, credit and macro-prudential policy: what can we learn from micro-data? (2015, CBI)
Infiniti Conference (2016, TCD)
IAFA 2016 Main Conference & Doctoral Colloquium (2016, WIT)
14th Corporate Finance Day (2016, KU Leuven)
IAFA 2017 Main Conference & Doctoral Colloquium (2017, AIT)
Presented at:
WIT Research Day (2016, WIT)
IAFA Doctoral Colloquium (2017, AIT)
2017-2018, Waterford Institute of Technology
Course: BA (Hons) in International Business
Module: Economics of the Market
Financing European Family Firms: What we can learn from the Survey on Access to Finance of Enterprises
Family firms represent the predominant form of enterprise across the globe. Families are even more commonplace as the principal owners of firms across Western Europe. Furthermore, family owned businesses are the largest subset of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) who represent a crucial socio-economic cohort to world economies. Notably European SMEs account for 99.8% of all enterprises and approximately 70% of all employment.
Research into family firms has increased greatly specifically in trying to understand the organisation with a focus on defining the family business, governance, succession, management, leadership and competitive advantage. Yet it remains a relatively overlooked research theme especially given that financial decision making is a key management challenge for family firms and non-family firms as appropriate and sufficient financial capital is central for firm growth and survival. Specifically, little is known about what sources of finance have been deployed by these firms of late especially in the light of the recent financial crisis and how they fared in terms of accessing finance, again the focus of this study.
Much of the empirical work conducted to date on financing family firms concerns publicly owned entities rather than privately held firms. Less is known about financing SMEs within the family firm landscape. Moreover, most of the research has been conducted in a single country setting.
The Purpose of this research: to examine the financing of European family firms as a subset of European Small & Medium Enterprises (SMEs).
- RQ1: What sources of finance are employed by European family owned SMEs in contrast to non-family owned SMEs?
- RQ2: How have European owned family firms perceived the availability of bank finance for them vis a vis non-family owned SMEs?
- RQ3: How do financial institutions perceive lending to family owned SMEs as oppose to non-family owned SMES?