Search results

This study investigates the relationship between female CEOs and SMEs’ financing decisions. The study also examined the moderating role of ownership structure (female, foreign, and state ownership) in female CEO-SMEs’ financing decisions.

The study has applied Generalized Least Square (GLS) and Binomial Logistic Regression. The study has used firm-level data from 2,700 Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in the Chinese economy.

The results suggest that female CEOs use debt financing. However, the financing decision of female CEOs varies if we account for female ownership, foreign ownership, state ownership, firm association with big firms, and the industry in which the firm operates. This study also provides robust evidence that female CEOs utilize debt financing under certain conditions and that female CEOs prefer long-term debt financing to short-term debt financing when considering debt maturity choices.

Recent studies report a negative relationship between female CEOs and financing decisions based on the rationale that females are risk-averse and choose less risky financing compared to their male counterparts. This study posits new evidence that female CEO financing decisions are not always risk averse if we consider female ownership, foreign ownership, state ownership, firm association with big firms, and the industry in which the firm operates. Thus, we contribute to the corporate governance literature, and this study implies a corporate financing policy.

We hypothesize that in a country with lax corporate governance rules Tobin's Q is maximized when controlholders’ vote approaches the supermajority level. In this holding range, controlholders do not possess extreme power (cannot pass supermajority decisions), nor do they feel a strong temptation to loot the firm (which largely belongs to them). Using a sample of 144 Israeli firms, we find that Tobin's Q is maximized when control group vote reaches 67%. This evidence is strong when ownership structure is treated as exogenous and weak when it is considered endogenous. Other ownership structure variables do not appear to have a significant valuation effect.

The characteristics of businesses change with the change in ownership structure of the business. This study examines the change in ownership structure of the firm after the departure of lone founders, and its influence on dividend payout decisions of the firm.

The authors employed 4,302 firm-year observations of non-financial firms listed on Pakistan Stock Exchange over the period 2007–2021. To test the hypotheses, the authors employed ordinary least squares regression, and additionally, generalized method of moments estimation and fixed effect analysis were applied to check for the robustness of results.

Using the lens of agency theory and social identity theory, the authors report that the presence of lone founder (family owners) is negatively (positively) associated with dividend payout, however, transition of lone-founder ownership to family-owned and family-managed firm leads to more dividend payout, whereas its transition to family-owned and non-family-managed firm results in lesser dividend payments.

This study provides novel insight into the strategic behavior of lone founders and extend the limited family business heterogeneity literature by examining the effects of ownership transition and its influence on firm's dividend payout decisions.

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 study aims to investigate the impact of family management and ownership structure, including foreign ownership and business group ownership, on corporate performance.

Using an agency perspective and a quantitative research methodology, this study examines listed firms in Pakistan from 2009 to 2018.

The results suggest that family management and concentrated leadership constrain, whereas family leadership, foreign ownership and group ownership strengthen monitoring effectiveness and corporate performance. These findings imply that the shareholder governance logic offers optimal solutions in an emerging economy, as relational governance may activate agency problems.

The findings are consistent with the relevance of relational governance mechanisms in the form of family leadership. However, the results suggest that emerging economies require a hybrid governance model to address their unique agency problems, thereby underlining context relevance in corporate governance scholarship. Furthermore, this research adopts a thick view of institutions to clarify institutional embeddedness and corporate governance contextuality in an emerging economy.

The purpose of this paper is to extend the understanding and application of interactive ties creating value through board characteristics, ownership concentration and firms’ performance by using a contingent theoretical-based framework based on the amalgamation of resource dependence theory, stakeholder theory, agency theory, stewardship theory and institutional theory in a country with weak political environment.

This study includes a sample of an unbalanced panel of 309 non-financial sector firms listed on Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) from 2005 to 2016. In order to address the issue of unobserved heterogeneity, simultaneous and dynamic endogeneity, the current study employed the technique Arellano–Bond dynamic panel data estimation under assumptions of GMM (Arellano–Bond, 1991).

The empirical results suggest that the presence of concentrated ownership moderates and helps to overcome the agency problems through different governance mechanisms (such as board size, independent directors and CEO duality). The larger boards are found to be beneficial whereas the higher representation of independent directors in the board is found to be detrimental for Pakistani firms.

Limitations of the study are, first the current study has analyzed public-listed firms from the non-financial sector, and second the study has only focused on the financial aspect of the performance. The future research could include other proxies of corporate governance and ownership structure such as board diversity and meetings, audit committee and managerial ownership, etc.

The research also helps Pakistani policy makers in numerous ways. First, the current study confirms the monitoring and expropriation effect of ownership concentration in corporate governance and performance mechanism. Thus, the Security and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP) should make such policies which protect the corporate board against the influence of concentrated ownership so that the interests of the minority shareholders are protected. Second, SECP should ensure that all the listed firms declare a comprehensive profile of their directors (such as academic qualification, age and experience) in their annual reports for the better understanding of the governance−performance mechanism.

The current study augments the emerging body of literature on corporate governance and firm performance mechanism through the amalgamation and testing of existing theories in an emerging economy like Pakistan by using wider and newer data set.

Ownership structure deals with internal corporate governance mechanism, which plays important role in minimizing conflict of interests between shareholders and management Ownership structure is an important mechanism that influences the value of firm, financing and dividend decisions. This paper aims to examine the impact of the ownership structures, i.e. managerial ownership, institutional ownership on financing and dividend policy.

The authors use panel data of manufacturing firms from both developed and developing countries, and the generalized method of moments (GMM) is applied to analyze the results. The authors collect the data from DataStream for the period of 2010 to 2019.

The authors find that managerial ownership and ownership concentration have significant and positive effects on debt financing, but they have significant and negative effects on dividend policy. Institutional ownership shows a positive impact on financing decisions and dividend policy for sample firms.

This study fills the gap by proving the policy implications for both firms and investors, as managers prefer debt financing, but at the same time try to ignore dividend payment. Therefore, investors may not invest in firms with a higher proportion of managerial ownership and may choose to invest more in institutional ownership, which lowers the agency cost.

The purpose of this paper is to use a panel of New Zealand unlisted firms from 1998 to 2009 to examine the relationship between ownership structure and firm leverage ratios. Although, the choice of the debt in capital structure is important for all firms, the scale effects may influence the degree of influence of particular financial theories upon capital structure.

To control the endogeneity effect of insider ownership, this study uses the dynamic panel generalised method of moment estimation and uses the Granger causality test to check the causality effect of leverage and insider ownership.

The findings suggest an inverse U-shape relationship of insider ownership and leverage, indicating higher insider ownership increases management entrenchment while lower insider ownership increases misalignment of the interests of management and owners. Moreover, this study finds bi-directional causation between insider ownership and firm leverage ratios.

Finance policy needs to vary across firm type, industries and firm characteristics and should match the different borrowing requirements of small business.

This paper contributes to literature by investigating whether the structure of equity ownership can impact cross-sectional variations in capital structure. Moreover, most of the capital structure research has been conducted in large markets like USA and publicly listed firms but this paper concentrates on the evidence from New Zealand unlisted businesses. Also, the econometric analysis is more robust due to controlling for the endogeneity effect of insider ownership.

The purpose of this study is to examine whether the influence of block ownership on firm performance depends on the identity of the largest investor.

The authors analyse the data for New Zealand companies for the period from 2002 to 2007 and develop multiple regression models which test the influence of block ownership on firm performance subject to the identity of the investor. A two‐stage least square approach is employed to test the effect of possible reverse causality between block ownership and firm performance on the relationship found in multiple regression models.

The authors find that the concentrated ownership has a positive, albeit decreasing, association with firm performance. This relationship is conditioned on the identity of the largest investor. Those companies whose block investors were financial institutions performed better than their peers. The superior influence of financial investors on corporate performance did not disappear even when the endogeneity of this relationship was accounted for.

The main contribution of this paper is the finding of a differential influence of various identities of block investors on firm performance. It questions the role that some domestic block investors play in the governance of New Zealand companies and the reason why the financial system has allowed corporate entities to be the main shareholders of the majority of firms when they underperform relative to their peers.

This paper aims to investigate the relationship between ownership structure and performance for a comprehensive sample of Chinese listed firms for the years 2000‐2004. In particular, the paper seeks to explore the effect of the dominance of state and private blockholders and control on firm performance. It aims to use a more differentiated approach than previous research on the subject, which has mainly focused on the effects of the pervasive state ownership on firm values. Accordingly, the main theme of the paper intends to relate to the analysis of the effects of private blockholders on firm value.

The paper tests the ownership‐performance relationship for the state and for sub‐samples with predominantly private shareholders. The paper uses both an ordinary least squares and a two‐stage least squares analysis, which treats ownership concentration as endogenous.

The paper finds evidence that large private blockholdings are to the benefit of firm value for the full sample. Conversely, for smaller samples of companies without or with very low shareholdings by the various state players, there is some evidence that large private block shareholdings might be to the detriment of firm value.

The study contributes to the literature by presenting a more comprehensive treatment of the ownership‐performance relationship of listed firms in China. The main theme of the paper relates to ownership concentration and the effects of private blockholders on the performance of firms, in addition to the endogeneity of ownership. It also contributes by utilising the alternative ownership classification system developed by the National University of Singapore.