To address succession issues, the owners of family firms increasingly transfer their equity to family and charitable foundations, thereby creating so-called foundation-owned firms. This form of succession has become increasingly common in various European countries. A small yet insightful stream of research has emerged comparing the performance of foundation-owned firms against the performance of nonfoundation-owned firms. Our study goes one step further and accounts for the heterogeneous nature of foundation-owned firms. We investigate the role of foundation purpose (family versus charitable foundation), stock market listing, and family involvement. Our results show that firms owned by a family foundation have better accounting performance than firms owned by a charitable foundation. We further find a performance-enhancing effect of family involvement in the firm’s management or supervisory board. Contrary to our expectations, we did not observe significant performance differences between private and stock market-listed foundation-owned firms. Our study advances the emergent stream of the foundation-owned (family) firm literature by integrating research on foundation-owned firms with research on family firms. Furthermore, we contribute to the corporate governance literature on ownership effects and blockholder ownership.

为了解决继承问题，家族企业的所有者越来越多地将其股权转移给家族基金会和慈善基金会，从而创建了所谓的基金会所有的公司。这种形式的继承在欧洲各个国家越来越普遍。出现了一些小而有见地的研究，将基金会拥有公司的业绩与非基金会拥有公司的业绩进行了比较。我们的研究更进一步，说明了基金会所有制企业的异质性。我们调查基金会宗旨（家庭基金会与慈善基金会），股票上市和家庭参与的作用。我们的结果表明，家族基金会所拥有的公司比慈善基金会所拥有的公司具有更好的会计业绩。我们进一步发现家族参与公司管理层或监事会的绩效提升作用。与我们的预期相反，我们没有观察到私人和在股票市场上市的基金会所有公司之间的显着绩效差异。我们的研究通过将对基金会所有企业的研究与对家族企业的研究相结合，促进了基金会所有（家族）企业文献的涌现。此外，我们为有关所有权效应和大股东所有权的公司治理文献做出了贡献。我们的研究通过将对基金会所有企业的研究与对家族企业的研究相结合，促进了基金会所有（家族）企业文献的涌现。此外，我们为有关所有权效应和大股东所有权的公司治理文献做出了贡献。我们的研究通过将对基金会所有企业的研究与对家族企业的研究相结合，促进了基金会所有（家族）企业文献的涌现。此外，我们为有关所有权效应和大股东所有权的公司治理文献做出了贡献。