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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the links between company ownership structure and financial performance in the context of the largest Central European stock market. Using the framework of agency theory, the authors address the question of the expropriation effect by dominant owners and the effect of collusion between shareholders of different types on company performance.

The authors test hypotheses on the relations between ownership concentration and the involvement of different shareholders (state, CEO, industry and financial investors) vs return on assets (ROA). The authors adopt the panel model controlling for endogeneity and sector of operation and analyze the data from the unique sample of 495 Polish non-financial firms listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange in years 2005-2014 with a total of 3,203 observations.

The authors identify a negative correlation between ownership concentration by the majority shareholder and ROA, which corresponds with the expropriation rationale of blockholders. The authors also observe negative effects due to ownership concentration by the second largest shareholder, supporting the notion of collusion. The results show that ownership by industry investors is associated with a higher ROA. Ownership by the CEO, state and financial investors proves to have no statistically significant effect on performance.

The paper further develops the nature of ownership-performance relations in the specific economic context of a post-transition, emerging European stock market, weak external corporate governance mechanisms, insufficient investor protection and significant concentration of share ownership. The results add to the understanding of monitoring vs expropriation effects by large owners and the collusion between different types of shareholders.

The purpose of the paper is to advance the understanding of the links between the presence of independent directors (IDs) on boards and the company value in the specific context of concentrated ownership. The authors apply the framework of agency theory to identify the monitoring effect of IDs in two legal systems – common law and civil law.

The authors test formulated hypotheses using a unique sample of 50 Mauritian and Polish companies listed during the years 2007 to 2015, amounting to a total of 394 observations adopting the fixed effect panel model.

The results of the panel model show a negative relationship between independent directors on boards and company value. Specifically, the effect remains negative for companies operating in the civil law system, whereas the stronger protection offered by common law offsets the effect of concentrated ownership, resulting in a non-correlation between independent directors on board and firm value.

This study expands the understanding of the value added by independent directors, addressing their monitoring role in the unfavorable context of concentrated ownership. It also reveals that different legal frameworks of civil law and common law may impact the monitoring performed by independent directors.

Non-financial reporting (NFR) is viewed as a major step towards organisational transparency and accountability. While the number of non-financial reports published every year has been growing exponentially over the last two decades, their quality and effectiveness in managing environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance have been questioned. Addressing these concerns, several jurisdictions, including EU Member States, introduced mandatory NFR regimes. However, the evidence on whether such regulation truly translates into enhanced ESG performance remains scarce. This paper aims to fill this gap in the literature by investigating the impact of the EU’s Directive 2014/95/EU (Non-financial Reporting Directive, NFRD) on the ESG scores of Polish companies.

Drawing upon institutional and strategic perspectives on legitimacy theory, the authors test the relationship between the introduction of the NFRD and the ESG scores derived from the Refinitiv database, using a sample of all those companies listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange whose disclosure allows for measuring ESG performance (yielding 171 firm-year observations from 43 companies).

This study’s findings show an improvement of ESG performance following the introduction of the NFRD. The difference-in-differences approach indicates that the improvement is larger for companies that are subject to the legislation when it comes to overall ESG performance, particularly for environmental and social performance. Nonetheless, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, no significant effect is found for performance in the governance dimension.

This study investigates the role of transnational mandatory reporting regulation in the first years of its enactment. The evidence offers insights into the effects of disclosure legislation in the context of an underdeveloped institutional environment.