Young people choose the City over family businesses

The lure of investment banking is leaving family owned businesses without anyone at the helm.

Business owners' sons and daughters who might previously have followed in their parents' footsteps, now want to go and work for the likes of Goldman Sachs, Howard Leigh, director of Cavendish Corporate Finance told the Financial Times in an interview published at the weekend.

We asked Leigh to elaborate. He told us: "The problem for family owned businesses is that they are not attractive enough to earn their children away from the lure of the City. Whereas before there was a lot of money to be made working for the family business, there's now a lot more to be made working for a bank."

The lack of enthusiasm from descendents has its plus and minus points for business owners. On the minus side, the absence of anyone to run the business means they're increasingly selling up, said the Financial Times. On the plus side, they're making plenty of money in the process.

The paper cites one husband and wife team who made 45m from selling their biotechnology business. The scions of entrepreneurs should perhaps be a little more far-sighted.