EN
Family businesses are generally considered to be different from nonfamily firms. Couple-run companies represent a subset of family business but are often excluded from comparative analyses since they lack one of the basic attributes of family businesses – the intention for succession. The goal of this study is to explore the financial differences between copreneurial firms and other firms where spousal relationships are not involved. We tested the differences between couple-run and non-couple-run companies using the matched-pair investigation. The sample was composed of 130 pairs of companies from the period 2007 – 2012. We used the Student’s t-test to explore the differences in profitability, labour productivity and level of debt, liquidity, and asset management. While copreneurial companies seemed to perform better in terms of operating efficiency (profit margin), they performed worse in terms of labour productivity and asset use efficiency (asset turnover), carried less debt and were comfortable with a lower liquidity.