Director Share Ownership and Corporate Performance – Evidence from Australia

Abstract

An important and controversial corporate governance issue is the extent to which share ownership by directors increases corporate performance. Some commentators suggest that increasing directors’ shareholdings in their companies provides directors with the incentive to improve corporate performance. Other commentators suggest that high levels of director share ownership may simply entrench directors. We examine whether there is a positive relationship between the level of director shareholdings and corporate performance for 180 listed Australian companies. We find that, in some circumstances, such a relationship does exist but the results differ according to a number of factors such as the performance measure used, whether director share ownership is measured by dollar value or percentage of the shares of the company outstanding, the size of the company and the industry in which the company operates.