Castilla y León family business chief backs family firms at Soria gaming congress

Eduardo Estévez Gudino, director of the Asociación Empresa Familiar de Castilla y León, spoke on the second panel discussion at the XIX Congreso de Juego de Castilla y León. The panel, titled "El futuro de la empresa de juego: transformar sin perder la esencia", was moderated by Ramón Cubián, director general de Suelo de la Comunidad de Madrid and delegado de Ordenación y Gestión del Juego. Estévez described himself as the son of a business owner and said he knew closely what business families experience, in good times and bad.

Estévez said family businesses are not always synonymous with small and medium-sized enterprises, noting that large family companies also exist, many of them present at the congress. Asked about the advantages of family firms, he cited a study according to which family businesses are more profitable than non-family ones, which he attributed to several reasons. The first, he said, is agility, with decisions often taken at a single table rather than through long processes. The second is that family firms are not speculators and take a long-term view rather than a short-term one. The third, which he called fundamental, is the commitment of the owning family, which in some cases is in its ninth or tenth generation and commits its capital and its assets.

Estévez said family businesses sustain the welfare state and that associations should defend business owners as the engine of the productive economy and employment, because they are the ones who take risks. He recalled that Spain was the first country to organise in family-business associations, with the Instituto de la Empresa Familiar, created in 1992, and territorial associations including the one in Murcia. These associations, he said, defend family firms on management challenges common to any company and above all on specific ones, such as carrying out succession properly, at the right time and in the right form.

On attracting talent, Estévez said family businesses compete for young people with other companies and also with the Administration, which many young people aspire to join. The solution, he said, is to win young people over with projects offering professional development as interesting as that at multinationals. The association works so that children and young people associate business with something positive and know the business reality of their territory, he said, giving the example that road signs for the whole world are made in Soria.

Estévez announced that the association wants to create a foundation, with the support of the Consejería de Educación, to bring companies' needs closer to training. Companies need young people, including university graduates but also vocational training students, he said. The moderator noted that various autonomous communities have legislated in favour of family businesses, with their own rules as in the Comunidad de Madrid, or with tax measures. Asked about extending certain tax reliefs to long-serving executives of the company itself, and not only to children or grandchildren, Estévez saw it as a way to reward and retain those executives.

Estévez criticised the discourse of some political leaders. "Es una pena escuchar a ciertos gobernantes hablar mal del empresario, hablar mal de la empresa familiar. Y eso descorazona muchas veces", he said, adding: "No digo que nos aplaudan, pero que se respete". He also said the association acts as an interlocutor with the Administration to reduce obstacles and to let businesses work.

Closing his remarks, Estévez showed a drawing he said he had prepared over the weekend with the congress in mind. "La empresa familiar es bendita, porque lo mejor de la vida es hacer cosas que no existían, pero es un lío, porque cuando uno combina cosas del amor con cosas del dinero, no es tan fácil", he said. The drawing represents the three circles of the family business, management, family and ownership, and how they intermingle. He said the key is that each person knows which place in that circle they occupy, because each family member has rights and obligations depending on where they stand, and that this can be achieved with generosity and training.