This paper reports an average negative 56 percent buy-and-hold market-adjusted stock return of emerging market entrepreneurial/family firms during a 5-year period in which their controlling owners pass on ownership and control to their successors. The value destruction is importantly attributable to the difficulties in partitioning and transferring specialized assets across individuals and/or firm boundaries, including intangible assets such as relationships with employees and banks, or assets jointly controlled by family members and/or co-founders. The existence of these specialized assets also explains why firm ownership is concentrated and why heirs or close relatives are chosen as successors in most of the succession events.