Factors Affecting Business Failure of Small and Very Small Greek Family Enterprises

This article investigates the factors that lead small and very small Greek businesses to financial failure using financial and accounting ratios as well as corporate governance characteristics. Our data set consists of 136 small and very small firms that went bankrupt, which were matched with a sample of 472 non bankrupt enterprises formed by random selection based on year, sector and sub-sector determinants, from 2003 to 2014. The total firm-year observations for bankrupt and non bankrupt companies were 940 and 5,041 respectively. Applying a Logit model for panel data, the results showed a significant impact on the likelihood of small and very small firms failing due to factors such as the type and the amount of bank lending, the level of profitability, cash flows, and liquidity.The data also support a statistically significant correlation of the probability of failure with non-financial factors such as Duality on the Board and CEO gender.The results of this paper will be useful for both banks and managers of small and micro businesses.