The effects of ownership concentration on the financial performance of publicly-listed companies in the ASEAN region

• Main Authors: Abesamis, Kristina Pauline B., Cadungon, Jiro Nigel, Lee, Hans Cedric O., Santiago, Ida Frances T.
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Animo Repository 2016
• Subjects: Corporations > Southeast Asia > Finance; Stock ownership > Southeast Asia; Accounting
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etd_bachelors/6823
• Institution: De La Salle University

Block ownership is a characteristic evident in most companies across the world. It has drawn attention from various researchers to investigate its impact on firm performance. Previous studies introduced it as a corporate governance mechanism to mitigate agency problem that could exist between owners and managers. So far, several theories and framework have been formulated in order to explain whether concentrated ownership has positive, negative or no effect on financial performance. Among these theories are monitoring theory and expropriation theory. Monitoring theory states that although managers prefer strategies that maximize their utility instead of shareholders wealth, presence of high ownership concentration within a firm provides large block shareholders an incentive to strictly monitor management decision which may eventually result in higher financial performance. This may not be true, on the contrary, if expropriation exists since benefits will be enjoyed only by these major shareholders as explained in the expropriation theory. With the existence of both circumstances, it may also result in an ambiguous relationship between ownership concentration and firm performance. Therefore, this study entitled The Effects of Ownership Concentration on the Financial Performance of Publicly-listed Companies in the ASEAN Region attempted to provide new evidence on the relationship of ownership concentration and financial performance of firms listed in the stock exchange of ASEAN countries. Moreover, the researchers also investigated the effect of other internal factors such as size, age, debt ratio, quick ratio, and asset turnover on their financial performance. In this regard, the group gathered information from Osiris and utilized multiple regression analysis. Using 420 publicly-listed companies in the ASEAN Region, the researchers found that block ownership has a statistically negative impact on firm performance which was consistent with the expropriation theory. Higher financial performance was not manifested in companies with high ownership concentration as benefits have been redistributed to large block stockholders only. These findings have relevance for researchers and practitioners as future reference in understanding block ownership as a corporate governance mechanism.