Ownership Structure and Corporate Firm Performance

Corporate Governance deals with the issue, how suppliers of finance to corporations assure themselves of getting a return on their investment. Several Studies have examined the relationship between managerial ownership and firm performance. Using different samples most of the studies provide general support for the argument that increase in managerial ownership increases firm performance. However, these results have been questioned recently. This work examines empirically the effects of ownership structure on the firm performance for a large sample of Indian Corporate Firms, from an ’agency perspective’. We examine the literature on this topic by examining the effect of interactions between corporate, foreign, financial, institutional, and managerial ownership. We provide empirical evidence, which suggests that firm size and age in non-linearly related to the firm performance. Using panel data framework, we show that a large fraction of cross-sectional variation, in performance, found in several studies, is explained by unobserved firm heterogeneity, rather than the share holders holding. We do not find any evidence that the differences in Ownership structure, affect firm performance; after controlling for observed firm characteristics and firm fixed effects. JEL Classification: G32; G34.