60% of small firms have no managerial successors

A survey shows that thousands of small and medium-sized firms in Japan are run by aging people who have no successors.

A government-owned public body, the Japan Finance Corporation, conducted a survey of its client companies with 300 or fewer employees, and more than 9,200 firms responded.

Forty-eight percent of the respondents said their companies are run by people aged 60 or older.

Twenty-eight percent have yet to find successors and 14 percent plan to close down their businesses when they retire.

The chief researcher of the Japan Finance Corporation, Yoshiaki Murakami, says small and medium-sized firms play an important role in employment. He says they should try to continue their operations by handing down the business to their staff or selling it to a company in the same sector.