Managerial ownership,board monitoring and firm performance in a family‐concentrated corporate environment

Using data from Hong Kong, a market that has family‐concentrated ownership structure, we examine the relation between managerial ownership, the board of directors and firm performance. We first conduct analysis on the managerial ownership and firm performance to derive the turning points where either ‘convergence of interest’ or ‘entrenchment’ effect of managerial ownership is dominant. Based on these estimated turning points, we find that at low and high level of ownership, effective board mitigates the entrenchment effect associated with managerial ownership; at medium level of ownership, board effectiveness is less demanded. These findings suggest that managerial ownership and board monitoring are substitutes in mitigating the agency problem between managers and shareholders. We also find that effective board curbs the excessive compensation by entrenched managers to themselves at low level of managerial ownership.     

Ownership, managerial control and the governance of companies listed on the Brussels stock exchange

This paper examines how corporate control is exerted in companies listed on the Brussels Stock Exchange. There are several alternative corporate governance mechanisms which may play a role in disciplining poorly performing management: blockholders (holding companies, industrial companies, families and institutions), the market for partial control, debt policy, and board composition. Even if there is redundancy of substitute forms of discipline, some mechanisms may dominate. We find that top managerial turnover is strongly related to poor performance measured by stock returns, accounting earnings in relation to industry peers and dividend cuts and omissions. Tobit models reveal that there is little relation between ownership and managerial replacement, although industrial companies resort to disciplinary actions when performance is poor. When industrial companies increase their share stake or acquire a new stake in a poorly performing company, there is evidence of an increase in executive board turnover, which suggests a partial market for control. There is little relation between changes in ownership concentration held by institutions and holding companies, and disciplining. Still, high leverage and decreasing solvency and liquidity variables are also followed by increased disciplining, as are a high proportion of non-executive directors and the separation of the functions of CEO and chairman.     

Top executive dismissal,ownership and corporate performance

This paper evaluates the empirical relationship between top executive turnover and firm performance. Based on a sample of the 460 largest UK listed companies during the period 1990–1998, we establish an inverse and robust statistical relation between the probability of a management change and a firm's performance: top executives are fired for poor performance. This can result from internal monitoring of management by the board or block share holders. Second, the data indicate that only very poor levels of performance affect significantly the turnover likelihood: corporate performance must fall dramatically to force a senior executive job separation. Third, the likelihood of managerial turnover for poor performance has not changed over time: today's senior managers face the same disciplining effects as those senior managers in earlier years. Finally, there seems to be no evidence that managerial stock ownership, measured as the proportion of ordinary shares owned by top managers, enables them to become entrenched.     

Corporate Performance,Corporate Governance and Top Executive Turnover in Finland

This paper empirically investigates how corporate governance forces and firm performance affect top executive turnover in Finnish listed companies. I document an increase in CEO, top management, and board turnover in response to poor stock price performance and operating losses. The sensitivity of the relation between stock price performance and CEO turnover is significantly higher in firms with a two‐tier board structure (when the CEO is not the chairman), but significantly lower when the CEO or a board member is the controlling shareholder. These results suggest that both the ownership structure and the board design have implications for the disciplining of managers.     

Managerial ownership dynamics and firm value

From 1988 to 2003, the average change in managerial ownership is significantly negative every year for American firms. We find that managers are more likely to significantly decrease their ownership when their firms are performing well and more likely to increase their ownership when their firms become financially constrained. When controlling for past stock returns, we find that large increases in managerial ownership increase Tobin's q. This result is driven by increases in shares held by officers, while increases in shares held by directors appear unrelated to changes in firm value. There is no evidence that large decreases in ownership have an adverse impact on firm value. We rely on the dynamics of the managerial ownership/firm value relation to mitigate concerns in the literature about the endogeneity of managerial ownership.     

Managerial ownership and firm performance: Evidence from China's privatizations

We examine the relationship between managerial ownership and firm performance for a sample of Chinese State-owned enterprises (SOEs) privatized over the period 1992-2000. The results indicate that managerial ownership has a positive effect on firm performance. Although return on assets (ROA) and return on sales (ROS) decline post-privatization, firms with high managerial ownership and, specially, high CEO ownership, exhibit a smaller performance decline. The difference is highly significant, with or without controlling for residual state ownership and changes in the firm's operating environment. We also find that the influence on firm performance becomes less significant at higher levels of CEO ownership. In contrast, performance continues to increase with managerial ownership. This finding suggests that, beyond a certain point, the distribution of shares would be more effective if extended to the whole management team instead of being limited to the chief executive.     

The performance effect of managerial ownership: Evidence from China

By examining a sample of non-listed Chinese firms, we provide the first evidence from China for the effect of managerial ownership on firm performance. In matching-sample comparisons, we find that firms of significant managerial ownership outperform firms whose managers do not own equity shares. Our further results indicate the relation between firm performance and managerial ownership is nonlinear, and the inflection point at which the relation turns negative occurs at ownership above 50%. Compared with previous studies, our results are less likely to suffer from an endogeneity problem due to the non-list nature of our sample and the unique institutional environment in China.     

Portfolio manager ownership and fund performance

This paper documents the range of portfolio manager ownership in the funds they manage and examines whether higher ownership is associated with improved future performance. Almost half of all managers have ownership stakes in their funds, though the absolute investment is modest. Future risk-adjusted performance is positively related to managerial ownership, with performance improving by about 3 basis points for each basis point of managerial ownership. These findings persist after controlling for various measures of fund board effectiveness. Fund manager ownership is higher in funds with better past performance, lower front-end loads, smaller size, longer managerial tenure, and funds affiliated with smaller families. It is also higher in funds with higher board member compensation and in equity funds relative to bond funds. Future performance is positively related to the component of ownership that can be predicted by other variables, as well as the unpredictable component. Our findings support the notion that managerial ownership has desirable incentive alignment attributes for mutual fund investors and indicate that the disclosure of this information is useful in making portfolio allocation decisions.     

Real options and earnings-based bonus compensation

This study extends the works of Mauer and Sarkar (2005) and Andrikopoulos (2009) by incorporating a regime-dependent earnings-based bonus into managerial compensation. Examining the individual effects of ownership shares and earnings-based bonus compensation, we find that the former provides managers with incentives to issue debt, whereas the latter induces the opposite result, although consistent impacts are found for the two types of compensation on both agency costs and the optimal investment decisions of managers. When managerial compensation comprises both ownership shares and an earnings-based bonus, there are significant differences in the effects of these two types of performance compensation on managers’ optimal investment and financing decisions, agency costs, optimal debt ratios and credit spreads, as a result of the specific interactions between the investment and financing decisions.     

The impact of board capital and board characteristics on firm performance

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of board capital on the relationship between CEO duality, board dependence, managerial share ownership and performance. We argue that board capital (the ability of board members to perform manager-monitoring activities and to provide advice and counsel to management) varies across board members. Highly qualified board members will be better at monitoring management and constitute a more valuable resource for firms. Based on a sample of U.S. companies listed in the Compustat S&P 500 and using both resource dependence and agency theories, we predict and find that CEO duality and board dependence negatively affect performance and that board capital mitigates the negative effects. We also predict and find that managerial share ownership positively affects performance and that board capital strengthens this positive relationship. The results are consistent with the view that firms benefit from board capital in terms of outside directors' ability to monitor managers and provide advice and counsel to managers.     

An analysis of majority owner‐managed companies in the UK

This paper investigates the characteristics of 73 UK companies in which managers have an ownership stake of greater than 50 per cent. We find that majority owner‐managed companies make less use of alternative corporate control systems and are less likely to remove their chief executive officer or other board members following poor performance. However, our sample firms actually outperform diffusely held companies of similar size in the same industry. The determinants of majority control appear more closely related to the characteristics of the controlling shareholders rather than the firm's operating environment. Changes in the ownership structure of our sample companies owe more to changes in owner‐specific characteristics and security issuance than they are related to changes in the company's operating environment or company performance. We conclude that despite the obvious agency costs of managerial entrenchment for closely held companies, for the present sample at least the incentive alignment benefits of large director shareholdings are beneficial to outside shareholders.     

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 Interrelationship Between Managerial Ownership and Board Structure

Abstract:  The paper tests the hypothesis that high managerial ownership entrenches managers by allowing the CEO to create a board that is unlikely to monitor. The results show a strong negative relationship between the level of managerial ownership and corporate governance factors, such as, the split of the roles of the CEO and the Chairman, the proportion of non-executive directors, and the appointment of a non-executive director as a Chairman. I also find that companies with low managerial ownership are more likely to change their board structure to comply with the Cadbury (1992) recommendations. The results suggest that managers, through their high ownership, choose a board that is unlikely to monitor. Overall, the findings cast doubt on the effectiveness of the board as an internal corporate governance mechanism when managerial ownership is high.     

Reexamining the managerial ownership effect on firm value

Whether equity-based compensation and equity ownership align the interests of managers with stockholders is an important question in finance. Early studies found an inverted U-shaped relation between managerial ownership and firm value, but later studies using firm fixed effects found no relation. Managerial ownership levels change very slowly over time which may mask an ownership effect on firm value when using a fixed effect model. This is due to a much smaller within firm variation than between firm variation. We demonstrate that using pay-performance semi-elasticity, rather than pay-performance sensitivity as a measure of managerial ownership incentives, results in meaningful variation within firm over time. The greater within firm variation increases the power to detect a relation between managerial ownership and firm value with fixed effect regressions. As in the early research on this issue, we find a significant inverted U-shaped relation between managerial ownership and Tobin's Q in fixed effects regressions and after controlling for endogeneity with both two-stage and three-stage least squares regressions. Our results are consistent with incentive alignment at low levels and risk aversion at high levels of managerial ownership.     

MANAGERIAL INCENTIVES AND THE USE OF FOREIGN‐EXCHANGE DERIVATIVES BY BANKS

We examine the effect of managerial compensation and ownership on the use of foreign‐exchange derivatives by U.S. bank holding companies. We focus on derivatives used for purposes other than trading to investigate derivative use in a hedging framework. We use instrumental variables probit and sample‐selection models to estimate the effects of endogenous and exogenous factors on the probability and extent of foreign‐exchange derivatives used. We find that the use of derivatives is inversely related to option awards but positively related to managerial ownership. Finally, our results suggest that ownership by large institutional shareholders provides incentive for managers to hedge.     

Managers,Owners, and The Pricing of Risky Debt: An Empirical Analysis

This article examines managerial ownership structure and return premia on corporate bonds. It is argued that when managerial ownership is low, an increase in managerial ownership increases management's incentives to increase stockholder wealth at the expense of bondholder wealth. When ownership increases more, however, it is argued that management becomes more risk averse, with incentives more closely aligned with bondholders. This study finds a positive relation between managerial ownership and bond return premia in the low to medium (5 to 25 percent) ownership range. There is also weak evidence for a nonpositive relation in the large (over 25 percent) ownership range.     

大股东控制权对股权激励效果的影响

本文分析了大股东控制权实现过程中对管理层股权激励的监督或冲突作用以及这种影响在不同股权性质和不同成长性公司中的不同表现。研究发现:大股东控制对管理层的作用显著影响股权激励效果;国有控股上市公司大股东对管理层的监督作用明显,随着第一大股东持股比例的增大,管理层股权激励效果增强;民营控股上市公司大股东控制权与管理层股权激励之间存在冲突,第一大股东持股比例越高,股权激励效果越差;高新技术企业大股东控制权与管理层股权激励之间存在冲突;非高新技术企业中第一大股东与管理层之间存在不明显的监督作用。本文的研究结论从股权激励的公司治理环境角度解答了我国股权激励效果不佳的困惑,为不同类型的上市公司启用管理层股权激励方案时考虑适宜的公司治理环境特别是大股东控制程度提供了经验证据。     

The impact of reliance on incentive-based compensation schemes,information asymmetry and organisational commitment on managerial performance

This study examines the effects of information asymmetry and organisational commitment on the relation between the extent of reliance on incentive-based compensation schemes and managerial performance. The responses of 109 managers, drawn from a cross-section of Australian manufacturing companies, to a questionnaire survey, were analysed by using a multiple regression technique. The results provide evidence of higher managerial performance for managers with low organisational commitment and a high reliance on incentive-based compensation schemes in high information asymmetry situations. On the other hand, the results show that the performance level of managers with high organisational commitment is unaffected regardless of the degree of information asymmetry and the extent of reliance on incentive-based compensation schemes.     

On the relation between ownership structure and capital structure

The agency relationship between managers and shareholders has the potential to influence decision-making in the firm which in turn potentially impacts on firm characteristics such as value and leverage. Prior evidence has demonstrated an association between ownership structure and firm value. This paper extends the literature by examining a further link between ownership structure and capital structure. Using an agency framework, it is argued that the distribution of equity ownership among corporate managers and external blockholders may have a significant relation with leverage. The empirical results provide support for a positive relation between external blockholders and leverage, and non-linear relation between the level of managerial share ownership and leverage. The results also suggest that the relation between external block ownership and leverage varies across the level of managerial share ownership. These results are consistent with active monitoring by blockholders, and the effects of convergence-of-interests and management entrenchment.     

MANAGERIAL OWNERSHIP,TAKEOVER DEFENSES,AND DEBT FINANCING

We examine the effect of agency conflicts on debt financing and show that managerial ownership and its interaction with takeover defenses affect these decisions. We find that (1) the relation between leverage and takeover defenses becomes insignificant when we control for the interaction of these defenses with managerial ownership, and (2) firms with large managerial ownership operate at high debt levels unless they have a large number of takeover defenses. Therefore, a two‐dimensional aspect of governance that includes the interaction between managerial ownership and takeover defenses is useful in understanding the effect of agency conflicts on firms' debt financing decisions.