*3.2. Data*

In this section we examine the hypothesis that family owned companies have lower leverage and lower risk than non-family peersof unlisted small and medium size sing data constructed based on the Iberian Balance sheet Analysis System (SABI) of the Bureau Van Dijk, containing detailed financial information on more than 2,000,000 Spanish businesses. Next, we employ the IAC2015 classification code excludingall financial and utilities firms using the industry classification. The reason for the exclusion of firms in these industries is due to the fact that firms are strongly regulated and influenced by the government. We also excluded all firms with incomplete accounting information. Our final sample consists of 888 firms and 7104 firm-year observations of unlisted small and medium size firms over the period 2007–2014. The study is based on Spain because Spain was one of the European countries that suffered greatly duringthe 2008 financial crisis. Many small and medium size businesses experienced bankruptcy and, as a result of this, it reveals an important case to study. We were interested to investigate whether the businesses failure was due to a high leverage or risk profile.
