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The purpose of this paper is to ask the following question: is there a link between being politically connected, the quality of governance and the company’s ownership structure?

The author then examined Canadian companies from the S&P/TSX index for the year 2015.

Political connectedness is significantly associated with lower quality of governance in relation to shareholders’ rights; ownership concentration is associated with lower quality of governance in relation to the overall governance, board of directors, shareholders’ rights and compensation structure indices; ownership structure does not mediate the relationship between political connections and quality of governance; and number of political connections through the executive is associated with less risky governance practices in relation to compensation structure; in other words, when members of the executive are politically connected, the firm adopts better compensation practices.

The time limitation is the main weakness of this study and probably the cause of observed mitigated results.

The author hope that the results will inform regulators on the need not only to further regulate the business-politics relationship, but also to consider the specific traits of concentrated ownership companies and the most critical aspects of corporate governance in politically connected firms, such as shareholders’ rights, particularly those of minority shareholders. For example, an intriguing case to investigate in the Canadian context would be Pierre Karl Péladeau’s foray into Quebec politics and the controversy ignited by his political bid in light of his position as majority shareholder (75 percent) in communications giant Quebecor Inc.

In fact, the results shown that concentrated ownership firms have lower governance quality than non-concentrated ones. Furthermore, in a concentrated ownership context, the minority shareholders’ rights could be threatened. In this sense, the results also shown that shareholders’ rights seem to be the most critical governance issue for the politically connected Canadian firms. These results are therefore the indication that Canadian financial market regulators must take action about politically connected and concentrated ownership firms in order to further protect minority shareholders’ rights.

This study makes a double theoretical contribution by enriching the literature on corporate governance and by providing one of the first investigations into the direct and comprehensive relationships between political connections, governance and ownership structure.

The purpose of this paper is to provide empirical evidence on the informational role played by ownership concentration.

The authors use bivariate vector autoregressive models to document the informational role of ownership concentration.

The findings suggest that the returns of firms with concentrated ownership structure lead the returns of firms with dispersed ownership structure in Morocco during the period between 2004 and 2014. The authors argue that this lead-lag relationship arises because a better information environment in firms with concentrated ownership structure enables quick incorporation of relevant information. The results are robust under different information regimes.

The authors believe that this paper is one of the first evidence on the informational role of ownership concentration in Morocco.

The purpose of this study is to investigate how concentrated owners add value to Asian firms. While prior research suggests that relational owners (i.e., business groups, top management team, board, government, banks, families, and corporation) may help firms fill institutional voids, this study proposes that it is transactional owners (i.e., foreign and institutional investors) lacking this ability who contribute most to firm performance. As these owners frequently hail from contexts with well-developed corporate governance traditions, they tend to have experience with the design and implementation of such governance practices.

This study involves a meta-analysis covering 276 studies from 17 Asian countries.

This study shows that transactional owners impose effective governance practices such as separating the chief executive officer (CEO) and Chair roles and assuring board independence. These practices promote decisions benefiting all shareholders, such as preventing diversification and financial over-leveraging.

This study contributes to the comparative corporate governance literature by showing that implementing internal governance practices helps improve firm performance in Asia. It also contributes to the owner identity literature by opening the black box of how transactional and relational owners differentially affect firms’ strategic behavior. Overall, this study yields a more nuanced understanding of what transactional owners contribute to Asian firms.

The chapter investigates three channels through which private benefits are hypothesized to be extracted in dual class companies: excess executive compensation, excess capital expenditures and excess cash holdings.

With a propensity score matched sample of S&P 1500 dual class and single class companies with concentrated control, the chapter analyzes the relationship between the valuation discount of dual class companies and measures of excess executive compensation, excess capital expenditure and excess cash holdings.

Executives in dual class firms earn greater compensation relative to their counterparts in single class firms. This excess compensation is more pronounced when the executive is a family member. The value of dual class shares is discounted most when cash holdings and executive compensation of dual class are excessive. Excess compensation is highest for executives who are family members of dual class companies. The dual class discount is not related to excess capital expenditures.

The research shows that the discount in the value of dual class shares in relation to the value of closely controlled single class company shares is directly related to the channels through which controlling shareholder-managers can extract private benefits.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of ownership concentration on CEO compensation and firm performance relationship in New Zealand.

The paper applies regression analysis to data from New Zealand listed companies from 2001 to 2005.

The study finds a non‐linear effect of ownership concentration on CEO compensation‐firm performance relationship, that is CEO compensation is negatively (positively) related to firm performance in firms with high (low) concentrated ownership structure respectively.

Results provide evidence for the proposition that ownership concentration at a high level in New Zealand does not constrain excessive management power, but exacerbates agency problems associated with executive pay. A highly concentrated ownership structure provides potential explanation for the misalignment between CEO compensation and firm performance in New Zealand. The positive effect of a low ownership concentration level on CEO compensation‐firm performance relationship suggests that monitoring the efficiency of large shareholders works better at a low ownership concentration level.

By exploring the non‐linear interaction between two governance mechanisms – CEO compensation and ownership concentration – the findings of the study make contributions to the current compensation and ownership literature mainly in two ways: although the non‐linearity between ownership concentration and firm value has attracted extensive research interest, little attention is given to the non‐linear effect of large shareholding on the CEO compensation contract in prior studies; and, in the context of a developed country with a small financial market, there are low regulatory “drag” and virtual absence of a litigation threat to organisations, as in New Zealand. This study suggests concentrated ownership as an underlying explanation for the misalignment between CEO compensation and firm performance.

This study aims to investigate the effects of ownership concentration and corporate governance on the extent of risk-taking in an important emerging economy – Thailand.

The results are corroborated by additional analysis, including an instrumental-variable analysis and propensity score matching.

Large owners are under-diversified and are thus more vulnerable to the firm’s idiosyncratic risk. Therefore, they tend to advocate less risky corporate policies and strategies. Consistent with this notion, the authors find that more concentrated ownership induces firms to take significantly less risk.

Ownership in Thai firms is substantially more concentrated than that in developed economies, providing a unique opportunity to study the effect of highly concentrated ownership on risk-taking.

This study aims to investigate whether country governance, regulated industry and firm-level characteristics, namely, ownership structure and firm size, are associated with the likelihood of firms having a politically connected board (PCB). This study also examines whether country governance and concentrated ownership moderates the association between institutional ownership and PCB.

This study uses cross-country analysis using 20 countries and hand-collected PCB data from 574 firms and 1,701 firm-year. This study performs logit regression analyses to examine hypotheses.

The results document that countries’ accountability, industry type and institutional ownership are associated with the likelihood of firms having a PCB. This study also finds that country governance, especially accountability, moderates the relationship between institutional ownership and PCBs. The results thus indicate the importance of country governance, especially accountability, in determining institutional investors’ political strategies.

This study provides several implications. First, firms tend to elect PCBs as a non-financial strategy because it arguably delivers additional resources and improves their performance, especially in countries with lower accountability and regulated industries. Meanwhile, investors and management must also hire PCBs cautiously because PCBs are closely related to agency issues. Agency issues reflect on the finding that institutional investors tend to avoid PCBs. However, the relationship between institutional investors and PCBs is closely related to the country-level context, especially accountability. This study also advises policymakers that country governance, especially accountability, is crucial in regulating the relationship between business and politics.

This study uses a relatively large number of new PCB and institutional ownership data collected manually from 20 countries. This study also examines several variables of country governance, such as accountability to PCB decisions that have not been tested before. This study examines the relationship between institutional ownership and PCB ownership decisions that were not examined before and uses a cross-country sample. In addition, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first one that examines the role of state governance, especially accountability for the relationship between institutional ownership and PCBs.

This paper aims to present an analysis of the association between five categories of concentrated ownership and firm performance in Pakistan. The connection between high ownership concentration and firm performance has attracted much attention, especially in emerging market, yet yielded many inconsistent empirical results.

Karachi Stock Exchange (KSE)-100 Indexed companies listed in KSE from 2007 to 2011 were selected as the sample, and correlation coefficient and regression model were used to inspect the relationship between ownership concentration degree and corporate performance.

It was found that there is no significant association with ownership concentration and accounting-based performance, market-based performance measures and economic profit, in general.

The first demonstration that the shareholding proportion of the single largest shareholder is the only variable having positive association with market-based performance measures.

This study is motivated by the competing views on whether internal governance mechanisms complement or substitute for external auditing, and how this association is affected by ownership concentration. The complementary view predicts that good internal governance mechanisms are related to high-quality audit. On the other hand, corporate governance mechanisms may be substituted for each other, so more investment in governance mechanisms leads to less investment in external auditing. Therefore, this study aims to examine the association between internal governance mechanisms and the demand for audit quality.

Data from Malaysian listed companies during the period 2009 to 2012 are used. Ordinary least square (OLS) regression is applied to analyse the data.

Companies with a higher concentration of ownership are less likely to demand extensive auditing. In addition, the study provides supporting evidence for the complementary association between a company’s governance and audit fees. However, the ownership concentration plays a minor role in the positive association between internal corporate governance and audit quality. Further tests are conducted and support the main findings.

Significant implications are provided for the audit profession in emerging economies, where concentrated ownership is common, to help policymakers and regulators in determining the power of controlling shareholders on audit quality and firm’s governance. The study’s findings open up avenues for further research.

This is the first work to address the role of ownership concentration in the association between corporate governance and audit quality; it suggests that the ownership structure must be considered in examining the effectiveness of corporate governance. The study also provides a comprehensive combination of internal governance mechanisms.

The purpose of this study is to comprehend the whole phenomenon of corporate philanthropy in Malaysia by studying the traits of companies that make significant contributions to society. Specifically, it looks at firms' ownership structures and specific characteristics and their influence on the extent of corporate philanthropy.

This study employs Agency theory as the basis for explaining philanthropic behaviour of Malaysian companies. A total of 100 public‐listed companies were selected from the top 200 companies based on market capitalization as listed on the Bursa Malaysia. The ownership structures and firm characteristics of the selected companies were tested against the extent of corporate philanthropy in order to see the relationship among the variables. In addition, multiple regression analysis was used to test the hypotheses.

The findings of this study reveal that ownership structure does have some influence on corporate philanthropic activities. This is consistent with the proposition of Agency theory. In addition, the size factor is also found to be a significant determinant of philanthropic tendency among Malaysian companies.

In view of the increasing importance of corporate philanthropy in the overall context of corporate social responsibility and nation building, this study serves well in providing an insight into the determinants of corporate philanthropic tendencies in Malaysia. By doing this, it extends the horizon of the study done by Prathaban and Rahim on the levels of firm charitable contributions.

This paper offers an important explanation of the factors that influence corporate philanthropic tendency, particularly in the Malaysian context.