تمرکز مالکیت، عملکرد شرکت و سیاست تقسیم سود در هنگ کنگ

We analyze a sample of 412 publicly listed Hong Kong firms during 1995–1998 in order to answer three questions. Does concentrated family ownership affect firm operating performance and value? Does it affect dividend policy? What is the impact of corporate governance on performance, value, and dividend payouts? Our results do not show a positive relationship between family ownership and return on assets, return on equity or the market-to-book ratio. In addition, we find a negative relationship between CEO duality and performance (where CEO duality is much more likely in family-controlled firms). We also find little relationship between family ownership and dividend policy. Only for small firms there is a significant negative relationship between dividend payouts and family ownership up to 10% of the company's stock and a positive relationship for family ownership between 10 and 35%. Dividend payouts in small firms also show little sensitivity to performance. Finally, the composition of the board of directors (proportion of independent non-executive directors, outsider-dominated board, presence of audit committees) has little impact on firm performance and dividend policy, particularly for small market capitalization firms. Our results for Hong Kong are in line with both Demsetz and Lehn (1985) [Demsetz, H., Lehn, K., 1985. The structure of corporate ownership: causes and consequences. Journal of Political Economy 93, 1155–1177] and Himmelberg et al. (1999) [Himmelberg, C.P., Hubbard, R.G., Palia, D., 1999. Understanding the determinants of managerial ownership and the link between ownership and performance. Journal of Financial Economics 53. 353–384], who show that concentrated ownership is not associated with better operating performance or higher firm valuation.

Does ownership concentration affect firm performance and value? The finance literature has been trying to answer this question since Demsetz and Lehn (1985) found no significant relationship between ownership concentration and the firm's return on equity. Other early studies in the U.S. highlighted a positive relationship between ownership concentration and firm value (Tobin's Q) for low levels of ownership, which can be attributed to the alignment of managerial incentives with shareholder interests. They also found a negative relationship at higher levels of ownership, which can be attributed to managerial entrenchment, since managerial shareholdings confer to management, among other benefits, protection against hostile takeovers (Morck et al., 1988, McConnell and Servaes, 1990 and Hermalin and Weisbach, 1991). On the other hand, in Japan, where firms are subject to monitoring from banks and takeovers are rare, the positive relationship between managerial ownership and firm value has been shown to be monotonic and holding for all levels of ownership (Morck et al., 2000). Similar evidence have been obtained by Hiraki et al. (2003), who found that managerial ownership is monotonically and positively related to the value of Japanese manufacturing companies, and by Chen et al. (2003), who showed that as ownership increases, there is greater alignment of managerial interests with those of stockholders for a sample of large Japanese firms. However, there is little evidence on the relationship between ownership concentration and performance in South East Asian countries, despite the fact that many economies in the region are characterized by considerable family ownership of listed corporations (Claessens et al., 2000). Standards of corporate governance and investor protection are also lower in the region compared to the U.S. or Japan (La Porta et al., 1998), which adds a potentially interesting dimension to the relationship between ownership concentration and firm value or performance. In countries with poor investor protection, controlling shareholders may have the opportunity to expropriate minority shareholders. Furthermore, Himmelberg et al. (1999) have cast doubt on previous findings by suggesting that the observed empirical relationships between ownership and performance may be the result of unobservable firm heterogeneity, which may affect both ownership concentration and firm value. They show that regressions of Tobin's Q on ownership concentration may be misspecified, because some unobserved determinants of Tobin's Q are also determinants of ownership concentration. These unobserved exogenous firm characteristics may induce a spurious relationship between Tobin's Q and ownership. Consequently, they find no relationship between ownership concentration and firm value after estimating firm fixed effects. Our article analyzes a sample of 412 publicly listed Hong Kong firms during 1995–1998 in order to investigate three questions. Does concentrated family ownership affect firm operating performance and value? Does it affect dividend policy? What is the impact of corporate governance (CEO duality, the composition of the board of directors, audit committees) on performance, value, and dividend payouts in family-controlled firms? Hong Kong is an appropriate market for conducting our study because it is characterized by widespread family control of publicly listed corporations, while at the same time having a common law legal system and corporate governance influenced by recent developments in the UK (Cadbury, 1992). We report three main findings. First, our empirical analysis does not show a positive relationship between family ownership and proxies for firm performance (return on assets, return on equity, and the market-to-book ratio). Therefore, our results for Hong Kong are in line with both Demsetz and Lehn (1985) and Himmelberg et al. (1999), who show that concentrated ownership is not associated with better operating performance or higher firm valuation. We also find a negative relationship between performance and CEO duality (defined as the same person holding the positions of company CEO and chairman of the board of directors, which is much more likely in family-controlled firms). The latter result is consistent with managerial entrenchment in companies that combine the positions of CEO and chairman of the board. Second, we find a significant positive relationship between family ownership between 10 and 35% of total company shares outstanding and the dividend yield for small market capitalization firms. These firms also exhibit low sensitivity of dividend payouts to performance. This evidence suggests that controlling shareholders may be viewing dividends as way to extract resources out of the firms they control because dividends make up a disproportionately large part of the income they derive from these firms. Finally, the composition of the board of directors (proportion of independent non-executive directors, presence of audit committees) has little impact on firm performance and dividend policy, which suggests weak corporate governance mechanisms. The rest of the paper is organized as follows. Section 2 describes the data, the variables, and our estimation methodology. Section 3 presents a descriptive analysis of the sample. Section 4 presents our multivariate analysis of the relationship between family ownership, firm performance, and dividend policy. Section 5 concludes.

Our article contributes to the literature on the relationship between ownership concentration and firm performance or value (e.g., Demsetz and Lehn, 1985, Morck et al., 1988, McConnell and Servaes, 1990, Hermalin and Weisbach, 1991 and Himmelberg et al., 1999), and to a growing body of literature on international corporate governance (e.g., La Porta et al., 1999, La Porta et al., 2000, La Porta et al., 2002, Claessens et al., 2000 and Faccio et al., 2001). We analyze a sample of 412 publicly listed Hong Kong firms during 1995–1998 and try to answer three questions. First, and most importantly, does concentrated family ownership affect firm operating performance and value? Our empirical analysis does not show a positive relationship between family ownership and return on assets, return on equity, or the market-to-book ratio. Therefore, our results for Hong Kong are in line with both Demsetz and Lehn (1985) and Himmelberg et al. (1999), who show that concentrated ownership is not associated with better operating performance or higher firm valuation. In fact, the only statistically significant relationship is negative, suggesting the presence of agency costs at low and moderate levels of family ownership. In addition, we also find a negative relationship between CEO duality and performance (where CEO duality is much more likely in family-controlled firms), which is evidence consistent with managerial entrenchment in companies that combine the positions of CEO and chairman of the board. Second, does concentrated family ownership affect dividend policy? We find little relationship between family ownership and dividend policy. Only for small firms there is a significant negative relationship between dividend payouts and family ownership of up to 10% of the company's stock and a positive relationship for family ownership between 10 and 35%. In addition, dividend payout policy is not sensitive to firm performance in small firms. These findings may suggest that dividend payouts are potentially used by controlling shareholders in smaller Hong Kong companies as a way of extracting resources out of the firms they control. We report evidence which shows that owners–managers may care more about their dividend income compared to their cash salary, since on average their cash salary is much lower than dividend income. However, it may also be the case that investors anticipate the potential expropriation by the controlling shareholders and demand higher payouts from firms with potentially the largest agency conflicts. And third, what is the impact of corporate governance on performance, value, and dividend payouts in family-controlled firms? Our evidence shows that the composition of the board of directors (proportion of independent non-executive directors, outsider-dominated board) has little impact on firm performance and dividend policy, particularly in small market capitalization firms. On the other hand, the presence of an audit committee is positively related to firm operating performance. However, this result must be interpreted with caution because only a small fraction of firms in our sample have audit committees on their boards (which were not mandatory during the period under study) and the relationship may be the result of self-selection bias. One policy implication that can be derived from this analysis is that corporate governance in Hong Kong needs to be strengthened. In addition, more effort is needed in order to ensure the true independence of non-executive directors and that they are able to perform an adequate monitoring function. The recent introduction of institutional investors, in the form of large private funds managing pension contributions under the Mandatory Provident Fund, could potentially help in raising the standards of corporate governance. Our findings have relevance for other East Asian countries too, which are characterized by even lower standards of corporate governance and investor protection compared to Hong Kong.