Institutional ownership and firm performance: The case of bidder returns

We employ corporate takeover decisions to investigate the impact of institutional ownership on corporate performance. The OLS regressions of bidder gains on institutional ownership indicate a positive relation between the two. However, we find institutional ownership to be significantly determined by firm size, insider ownership and the firm's presence in the S&P 500 index. Thus, when bidder gains are regressed on the predicted values of institutional ownership in two-stage regressions, the recursive estimates do not confirm the relationship shown by the OLS regressions. Furthermore, we do not find any evidence that active institutional investors (e.g., CalPERS) as a group enhance efficiency in the market for corporate control. These findings cast doubt on the superior selection/monitoring abilities of institutional investors.     

The Level and Stability of Institutional Ownership and Firm Performance: Evidence from Taiwan

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the influence of shareholding stability of institutional investors on firm performance. We analyze 647 sample companies listed in the Taiwan Stock Exchange from 2005 to 2009 using the coefficient of variance of institutional holding proportion as the measure for ownership stability. The empirical results show that increasing stability of institutional holdings is related to better firm performance. The low-risk and younger firms with higher CEO incentive compensation, larger insider holdings, and higher growth usually have better performance. Furthermore, when the long-term institutional shareholdings, particularly of foreign institutions, are higher, the firm performance is better.     

Institutional investors' holdings surrounding equity rights offerings

We examine shareholding surrounding Swedish rights offerings using detailed information on the ownership in firms. We analyze shareholding levels and their changes for domestic and foreign institutional investors. As institutional holdings change, domestic institutions increase their holdings more than foreign institutions. Our examination of low and high buying activities by institutional investors surrounding rights offerings shows no stock picking ability, thus not supporting the “smart-money hypothesis” (Gibson et al., 2004). We also find that investor domicile influences firm value following the offering. Overall, foreign investors exhibit a strong and opposite directional reaction to adverse selection costs than domestic investors.     

On institutional ownership and firm performance: A disaggregated view

We study the relationship between institutional ownership and firm performance in Finland. A systems approach is employed to investigate the potential two-way causality between firm performance and ownership structure. Three-stage least squares estimation technique is used to solve for the systems. The evidence suggests an endogeneity problem between firm performance and institutional ownership. However, the magnitude of the problem differs with respect to the concentration of ownership measure used. Our results show that a more equal distribution of the voting power among the largest institutional stakeholder may exert positive effects on firm performance. We also find a significant difference relating to firm performances and equity ownerships between the two classes of institutional investor. Consistent with the ownership structure in Finland, we find that a simple ownership concentration index does not influence firm performance.     

Institutional Investors and Firm Efficiency of Real Estate Investment Trusts

This study investigates the effect of institutional ownership on improving firm efficiency of equity Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs), using a stochastic frontier approach. Firm inefficiency is estimated by comparing a benchmark Tobin??s Q of a hypothetical value-maximizing firm to the firm??s actual Q. We find that the average inefficiency of equity REITs is around 45.5%, and that institutional ownership can improve the firm??s corporate governance, and hence reduce firm inefficiency. Moreover, we highlight the importance of heterogeneity in institutional investors??certain types of institutional investors such as long-term, active, and top-five institutional investors, and investment advisors are more effective institutional investors in reducing firm inefficiency; whereas hedge funds and pension funds seem to aggravate the problem. In sub-sample analysis, we find that these effective institutional investors can reduce inefficiency more effectively for distressed REITs, and for REITs with high information asymmetry, and with longer term lease contracts. Lastly, we find that the negative impact of institutional ownership (except for long-term institutional investors) on firm inefficiency reduces over time, possibly due to strengthened corporate governance and regulatory environment in the REIT industry.     

Institutional Ownership,Diversification, and Riskiness of Bank Holding Companies

We examine the relationship among the level and stability of institutional ownership, diversification, and riskiness of publicly traded bank holding companies. We find that large and stable institutional ownership is associated with a higher (lower) level of geographic, revenue, and nontraditional banking (asset) diversification and lower risk, suggesting that institutional investors are prudent and favor risk‐reducing diversification strategies. The association between institutional ownership level and diversification is more pronounced under deregulation and during the crisis, suggesting a substitution effect between regulation and market discipline, and a greater level of monitoring and/or advising by institutional investors during the crisis, respectively.     

Foreign Ownership and Non‐Life Insurer Efficiency in the Japanese Marketplace

Traditional shareholding patterns in Japan have experienced significant change beginning in the early 1990s. Since that time, foreign institutional shareholding has increased significantly largely at the expense of domestic financial institution ownership. This article examines whether these changes in ownership patterns share a relationship with insurer performance in the non‐life insurance market. Using data from 1992 to 2005, we assess performance in terms of efficiency measures using data envelopment analyses (DEA) techniques. Our results show that higher levels of domestic financial institution ownership in Japan are associated with insurer inefficiency. Relative to that relationship, the foreign ownership–insurer efficiency relationship is found to be positive. Additionally, we find that the disparity between those relationships has become more acute since 2001 when the Japanese non‐life insurance market experienced significant consolidation.     

Local Effects of Foreign Ownership in an Emerging Financial Market: Evidence from Qualified Foreign Institutional Investors in Taiwan

We examine the local effects of equity ownership by investors who are classified as qualified foreign institutional investors in Taiwan. Our empirical analyses reveal a pronounced foreign ownership effect, whereby stocks with high foreign ownership outperform stocks with low foreign ownership. The valuation effect is present even after controlling for firm export, size, or transparency levels. We pursue a performance-based explanation for this effect and find that foreign ownership is strongly and positively associated with firm R&D expenditures and contemporaneous and subsequent firm performance. Our evidence is consistent with foreign investors who enjoy a long-run information advantage over domestic investors.     

Foreign Ownership and Firm Value: Evidence from Australian Firms

The paper employs various measures of foreign ownership and investigates impact of foreign ownership on value of firms in Australia. We find that both, traditional measure and free float measure of foreign ownership has a positive and significant impact on firm value. We also find that foreign institutional holdings in Australian firms’ have a significant and positive impact on firm value. Results are robust to various econometric estimation techniques. Our results have implications for investors and corporate financial policies.     

The impact of institutional ownership on corporate operating performance

This paper examines the relation between institutional investor involvement in and the operating performance of large firms. We find a significant relation between a firm’s operating cash flow returns and both the percent of institutional stock ownership and the number of institutional stockholders. However, this relation is found only for a subset of institutional investors: those less likely to have a business relationship with the firm. These results suggest that institutional investors with potential business relations with the firms in which they invest are compromised as monitors of the firm.     

Capital market pressure,real earnings management,and institutional ownership stability - Evidence from Poland

This study investigates whether and how institutional ownership stability influences real earnings management. We find that institutional investors holding stable equity stakes play an important monitoring role in reducing real earnings management by managers pressured by capital market forces to “meet or beat” earnings targets. We also document no relationship between institutional ownership stability and real earnings management in companies with entrenched managers protected from capital market pressure by a dual-class ownership structure. Our findings of the negative association between real earnings management and institutional ownership stability also indicate that firms with more stable ownership are engaged in lesser sales manipulation and overproduction. In addition, we reveal that pressureresistant institutions (pension funds and mutual funds) that reduce real earnings management are an essential part of the external governance mechanism in an emerging economy.     

The effects of institutional ownership on the value and risk of diversified firms

We study the link between institutional ownership and firms' diversification strategy, value and risk. Our sample includes US-listed firms with segment data from 1998 to 2012. We find that not all kinds of diversification are value-destroying; unlike industrially-diversified firms, global single-segment firms are trading at a premium relative to their imputed value. The presence of institutional investors and the stability of their shareholdings positively influence the likelihood that a firm is diversified. The proportion (volatility) of institutional ownership is higher (lower) among diversified firms compared to domestic single-segment firms. More importantly, the higher the proportions of institutional shareholdings, the higher the excess value of the diversified firm and the lower the firm idiosyncratic risk. Institutional ownership volatility, on the other hand, is inversely related to a firm excess value but positively related to its idiosyncratic risk. Thus, the presence of long-term stable institutional investors enhances the value of diversified firms. Our findings remain robust to various model specifications and estimation techniques.     

Corporate jets and private meetings with investors

We use corporate jet flight patterns to identify private meetings with investors that are ex ante unobservable to non-participants. Using approximately 400,000 flights, we proxy for private meetings with “roadshows,” defined as three-day windows that include flights to money centers and to non-money centers in which the firm has high institutional ownership. Roadshows exhibit greater abnormal stock reactions, analyst forecast activity, and absolute changes in local institutional ownership than other flight activity. We also find positive trading gains in firms with more complex information and infrequent private meetings, suggesting that roadshows provide participating investors an advantage over non-participating investors.     

Does the investment horizon of institutional investors matter for stock liquidity?

This paper examines the role of the investment horizon of institutional investors on stock liquidity of firms. We show that an increase in long-term institutional ownership is negatively associated with firm liquidity, while an increase in short-term ownership is positively related to a firm's stock liquidity. We identify the ownership-liquidity relationship by examining two major channels: the trading activity channel and the informational friction channel. Long-term investors reduce stock liquidity through low frequency trading and access to value-enhancing and private information, which induces adverse selection bias. In contrast, short-term investors improve liquidity through trading activity and competition with other investors, which lowers transaction costs. Our findings further suggest that the effects of an increase in long-term (short-term) institutional investors on liquidity weaken (strengthen) when a firm has more publicly available information. Finally, we show that the positive impact of an increase in long-term ownership on valuation is more pronounced for firms with higher liquidity and the valuation effect is persistent.     

TAX-LOSS SELLING,INSTITUTIONAL INVESTORS,AND THE JANUARY EFFECT: A NOTE

In this note we test the hypothesis that trading by tax-motivated individual investors is responsible for the January effect. We examine the ownership structure of a large sample of firms over a four-year period and find that the small firms that usually exhibit high January returns have low institutional ownership. After controlling for firm size, we still find that institutional ownership is significantly related to January abnormal returns. These results suggest that one reason the January effect may concentrate in small firms is because these firms are held by tax-motivated individual investors.     

Does product market competition affect corporate governance? Evidence from corporate takeovers

We examine the extent to which shareholders strategically allow a weak governance structure in response to increasing competition pressures in the product market. We treat acquisitions by rival firms as shocks that increase threats in a competitive product market. We find that firms adopt greater entrenchment provisions when there are greater competition threats. Moreover, firms with high institutional ownership – especially by dedicated investors – and​ board independence within the compensation committee are particularly aggressive, which is consistent with our theory that aggressive behavior represents a strategic decision by shareholders. Finally, we find positive relationship between the adoption of entrenchment provisions and firm’s future performance, but only for the adoption under relatively severe competitive pressures.     

Does foreign institutional ownership motivate firms in an emerging market to increase voluntary disclosure? Evidence from Taiwan

This study examines the relationship between foreign institutional ownership and voluntary disclosure in an emerging market. By exploiting a unique dataset of daily foreign investment flow and ownership data from Taiwan, this paper examines whether foreign ownership is associated with the likelihood of holding conference calls and investigates whether conference calls are informative to foreign market participants. After controlling for other characteristics of a firm??s information environment, we find that the decision to hold conference calls is positively associated with foreign institutional ownership. We also provide evidence that the trading turnover by foreign institutional investors immediately increases after the conference calls, indicating that conference calls are informative for foreign institutional investors. Our results are robust, after controlling for endogeneity.     

Postprivatization corporate governance: The role of ownership structure and investor protection

We investigate the role of ownership structure and investor protection in postprivatization corporate governance. Using a sample of 209 privatized firms from 39 countries over the period 1980 to 2001, we find that the government relinquishes control over time to the benefit of local institutions, individuals, and foreign investors, and that private ownership tends to concentrate over time. Firm size, growth, and industry affiliation, privatization method, as well as the level of institutional development and investor protection, explain the cross-firm differences in ownership concentration. The positive effect of ownership concentration on firm performance matters more in countries with weak investor protection.     

第一大股东持股的区间效应——基于上市公司的实证分析

实证结果表明,第一大股东对公司绩效同时存在激励效应和壁垒效应,第一大股东持股比例与公司绩效呈显著的N型相关关系,即在第一大股东持股占据绝对控股地位(40%)之前,第一大股东的持股具有积极的治理功能;超过了这个区间,大股东的持股对公司绩效则具有消极作用;而随着第一大股东持股的进一步上升(65%以上),控股股东吸取个人利益的动力又会弱化,大股东股权的增加又会导致公司绩效的增加。此外,第一大股东性质对权益激励的影响也因第一大股东持股区间的不同而异,仅在20%~40%这个区间范围内,国家股与公司绩效呈现负相关关系且结果并不显著,而在其他的区间范围,国家股的持有与公司成长性呈现显著的正相关。     

The diligent effect of investor relation officers in conference calls: Evidence from China

This study explores the determinants of investor relations (IR) officers’ diligence in conference calls and the impact of their diligence on capital markets. We apply IR officers' attendance in conference calls as a proxy variable for their diligence. We find that the age, gender, salary, and tenure of IR officers and the start time of conference calls are determinants of IR officers' diligence in conference calls. Their diligence significantly increases institutional ownership and reduces returns volatility. Further analysis shows that IR officers' diligence facilitates the growth of domestic institutional investors' ownership significantly more than that of foreign institutional investors. In addition, information transparency significantly facilitates the relationship between IR officers' diligence and return volatility. Finally, the change in institutional ownership and return volatility also varies with firm size and state ownership. In conclusion, we find that IR officers' diligence plays a positive role in IR management, as it significantly improves firms' institutional ownership and lowers return volatility.