[iamEAP]

My understanding is that many of the oldest companies have lasted so long because they were/are family operations. Countries where “son takes over the business” is the norm will have more older businesses.

Japan is one such country and also happens to have been around a long time too.

[f1shy]

AFAIK, in the case of the German company Robert Bosch GmbH, the founder was pretty sure his family would not do a good work of keeping the company running (he didn't even trusted himself), so he devised a somewhat complicated mechanism, where the family receives some money, but has little power over the direction of the company. Some other companies followed after that.