Private firms have to bring in external ideas: UK expert

One of the UK's top family-business advisers is suggesting that as some of China's pioneering entrepreneurs of the 1970s reach retirement, they would do well to consider a more modern approach to their succession planning.

Martin Graham, chairman of the London-based Oracle Capital Group, says that in the West, the vast majority of family businesses are small or medium-sized enterprises who accept that as they grow larger and more successful, they will have to consider bringing in external talent and fresh ideas.

But he says many Chinese entrepreneurs are still rejecting any notion of that, and remain firmly set in their traditional ways of simply passing the business onto the next generation.