Major Shareholders' Investment Background and Corporate Investment Behavior — Based on Evidence from China's Private Listed Companies

Abstract

Investment behavior is one of the three major financial decisions of a company. Based on this, this paper takes China's private listed enterprises from 2004 to 2017 as samples, and through literature review and empirical analysis, studies the influence of the major shareholder's investment background on the company's investment behavior. It is found that the investment background of the major shareholder is positively correlated with the cash outflow from the company. At the same time, the major shareholders with investment experience tend to choose the pyramid shareholding structure with financing advantages. After the introduction of shareholding structure, the above positive relationship has a significant change: the internal capital market brought by the pyramid shareholding structure can promote the major shareholder with investment background to find more potential investment opportunities and promote the scale of cash outflow from the company's investment, while the direct shareholding structure can inhibit the promotion effect. To sum up, the investment background provides the major shareholder with subjective motivation and ability to conduct investment, while the pyramid shareholding structure creates objective conditions for him to some extent. The research conclusion of this paper enriches the theoretical research on the high-level echelon theory and the motivation of the existing corporate investment behavior, and provides some reference significance for the investors in the capital market to judge the investment decisions of the company and identify the sustainable development and expansion ability of the company.