Last week an old school friend dropped me a line alerting me to an upcoming auction at Stride & Son in Chichester. He thought I might be interested in lots 495 to 503 which featured collections of ‘ephemera’ relating to Shippam’s of Chichester.

C Shippam Limited was established in its earliest form in the late eighteenth century by one of my forebears and namesakes.

Over the years the company enjoyed great success manufacturing various forms of processed meat and fish products, including the ‘famous’ Chichester Sausage and even Real Turtle Soup, an unopened can of which was available as part of lot 499 (which I declined to bid for).

Today the company probably remains best known for its pastes and spreads which were a staple of many a working man’s lunchbox and school tea before the advent of chilled patés and deli counters.

The business ceased to be a family enterprise in the early 1970s, although my father continued to work for the company. My involvement was therefore limited to taking prep school friends on factory tours as a birthday treat.

Despite my only tenuous connections to Shippam’s I continue to have a sense of pride in my family’s commercial success. I was therefore grateful to have my attention drawn to the auction, and delighted to find my online bid for lot 503 (see photo) had been successful, for the princely sum of £66.88.

I think there is much to be learnt from and valued in a family business. At its core lies a culture of custodianship that drives the commercial endeavour.

The over-riding goal of many family firms is not a short-term hunger to maximise shareholder returns, although this can be important, but a focus on passing the enterprise on to the next generation in the same or better shape than it was when the current generation took it on.

Growth may be an important part of making the business successful, but it may not be the only measure by which the management should be or seek to be judged.

This is in stark contrast to the culture that pervades both private equity and many publicly traded companies today.

Private equity often appears to be hard-wired towards short-term value maximisation, driven by a wish to raise more capital to grow faster to raise more capital to grow faster…to exit.

Publicly traded companies face the agency problem: management are ‘just passing through’. Their tenure is often brief, with ‘good’ corporate governance rules set up to encourage this, and the Board’s focus, incentives and compensation package are designed to reflect this.

This is not to say that a family business should always stay in the family. There can be good reasons why selling may be desirable or necessary, but in any business there is no shame in a Board that sees itself as a custodian of long-term value rather than the driver of short-term exponential growth in the bottom line or share price.

Politicians and those that care for the planet, as well as investors, would do well to remember this.