Ivan Kmotrík is the man behind GGT, the biggest family business in Slovakia and one of the companies in his Grafobal Group. (source: SME - Marko Erd)
The Slovak Spectator, in cooperation with FinStat and the Institute of Family Business, has collected data from more than 500 local family businesses with total revenues in Slovakia in 2023 exceeding €10 billion. As well as featuring the largest players, smaller companies are also included.
The data shows that most family businesses in Slovakia are involved in wholesale and retail (28.3 percent by total number and 50.8 percent by revenues). Other popular sectors based on revenues are industry (13.6 percent) and food processing (12.3 percent). The latter includes producers who managed to maintain the tradition of their family firms during communism when private business was banned.
There are also a number of smaller family firms in real estate, tourism and gastronomy.
Definition of a family business
A family business is a company in which at least two family representatives are active and the family owns more than 50 percent of the company and participates in its management.
A member of a family is defined as: spouses, immediate relatives (e.g. children), siblings and persons related to each other up to the fourth degree, and their spouses
Some are still managed by their founders while in others members of the third or even fourth generations have already taken over at the managerial helm.
The Bratislava region far exceeds all others in terms of the number of companies which are family businesses (31.6 percent), and in terms of their total revenues, amounting to €3.6 billion (36 percent). The largest companies run by Slovak families are more predominant in western Slovakia, while Košice and Prešov region have together a share of total revenues of around 12 percent.
