Can the exit threat of non-controlling major shareholders promote corporate innovation?

Abstract

ABSTRACT Chinese listed companies recently come out a set of serious agency problems. For example, directors and controlling shareholders highly override company interests. Conventional governance methods such as introducing non-executive directors couldn't effectively solve this problem. The proposal of encouraging non-controlling major shareholders to actively participate in corporate decision-making becomes more popular nowadays. This paper studies the mechanism of non-controlling major shareholders’ exit threat on corporate innovation, and explore the impact of property rights and corporate life cycles on this mechanism. The result shows the exit threat of non-controlling major shareholders did not promote corporate innovation. This is mainly because major shareholders pursue short-term benefits and tend to support financial asset investment rather than R&D investment. Our research also come out that the inhibitory effect of the exit threat of non-controlling major shareholders on corporate innovation is more significant for non-state-owned and mature enterprises in China. This article finds Chinese capital market investors pay more attention to short-term interests and lack the long-term value investment awareness, which is not conducive to the long-term development of enterprises.