Sciontology: family-managed businesses

In the GCC many of the firms are family-owned. It has something to do with shariah creating obstacles to the formation of corporations.

Which makes this item at Freakonomics so relevant to the Emirates Economist blog.

The son of Warren Buffett, Peter Buffett, states in layman's language the problem of succession in family-owned businesses:

Well, you know, my dad talks about the ovarian lottery, this idea that you’re born into these circumstances that you can’t, at least as far as I’m concerned, you can’t control when you’re on the other side of being born. And so I think there’s a version of that that holds true in this. You know, the odds of having a son or daughter that are as passionate, and excited and driven as a founder of a business was, or even the person that took it over—whatever that might be, whatever passion and drive was there in that person—the odds of that being in the next generation, I think are incredibly small. You would know the details better than I, but I think that if the child is truly passionate about it and lives and breathes the same thing, absolutely. But again, what are the odds?