SMU has launched the Business Families Institute (BFI), with the aim of serving the needs of business families in South-east Asia. "Since 2010, SMU had recognised the emergence of Asian business families and discerned that they require specifically contextualised thought leadership and applied knowledge. This is the gap that BFI@SMU will fill," said SMU President Arnoud De Meyer on Wednesday. BFI@SMU will serve as an educational, engagement and research platform to bring together business families from around Asia. Through sharings by academics and the experiences of business families which the faculty has worked closely with, BFI@SMU hopes that lessons gleaned will benefit other business families and help them achieve success. Among the business family-specific issues that BFI@SMU will address are family ownership, business succession, business diversification and governance. SMU chairman Ho Kwon Ping said: "With this phenomenal growth in Asia, one of the things that have been worrying me the most is that there is …a glaring absence of values in Asia. I think what business families and BFI can do is to…(not) just provide a framework for business families to continue, but (a) framework (that) can be the genesis of some meaningful thought leadership coming from Asia today."