TY  - JOUR
TI  - Demystifying the Illusion of the Positive Effects of Ownership 
Concentration on Corporate Performance 
T2  - Investment Management & Financial Innovations
IS  - 4
KW  - corporate performance
KW  - firm value
KW  - ownership concentration
KW  - ownership structure
AB  - Evidence supporting the relationship between ownership structure and 
corporate performance has been rather contradictory. In this 
research, we investigate the effects of ownership structure on 
business performance on a sample of 600 listed Canadian firms. We 
used a three-phase analysis of variance in which each phase used a 
different definition of ownership concentration: i) the overall 
concentration of the five largest shareholders (CONC); ii) the 
holdings of the largest shareholder (BLC1); and iii) inside 
shareholders as either managers or directors (BLCI). For each phase, 
we used cluster analysis and three other concentration cutoff levels 
(an even-split into thirds, extreme quartiles, and the Morck, 
Shleifer and Vishny (1988) cutoff) to verify if there is an optimal 
level of concentration cutoff that may impact the performance. Our 
results indicate a high level of ownership concentration in Canadian 
corporations. The Berle-Means widely held corporation is far from 
universal. Besides, while state control of traded firms is 
infrequent, family control is common. However, our findings indicate 
only a weak association between performance measures and ownership 
concentration levels, except for the return on investment, which 
shows some improvement with a high level of ownership. Our results 
confirm those of Demsetz and Lehn (1985). Overall, no evidence is 
found to support the efficient monitoring hypothesis, since 
performance cannot be improved by blockholders who seem not only to 
be entrenched but may benefit from perquisites and on-the-job 
consumption. This might indicate that large shareholders expropriate 
minority absentee owners. 
AU  - Gadhoum, Yoser
AU  - Noiseux, Marie-Helene
AU  - Zeghal, Daniel
UR  - http://ecsocman.hse.ru/text/18814681/
PY  - 2005
SP  - 50-68
M2  - 50
VL  - 2
SN  - 
N1  - 
LA  - EN
CY  - 
PB  - 
M3  - 
LB  - 
VL  - 
ER  -