Private equity and entrepreneurial investments: understanding the determinants of founder-CEO succession in the Caribbean

Our study develops a contextually embedded institution-theoretic model of the major influences precipitating entrepreneurial founders’ leadership succession. Drawing on a unique sample of 184 listed firms from 10 national securities markets across the Caribbean region, we find that both business group (BG) and private equity (PE) ownership are associated with an increased likelihood of founder retention. The results also show that firms’ adoption of shareholder value corporate governance negatively moderates the BG main effect, while positively moderating its PE counterpart. We argue that this is reflective of a simpler lifecycle in emerging economies centred on one major transition, namely the transition from internal to external resource provision