Ownership structure and expropriation in stock exchange listed firms

Abstract

This paper analyses firms’ ownership structure and corporate governance in seven countries, with an emphasis on stock exchange listed firms. This focus is, in our view, important because these firms are more representative of the economies of countries included in our sample. Our results indicate that in Canada, Europe and East-Asia, ownership structure is highly concentrated. Most of the firms are controlled by at least one large shareholder who reinforces his or her control with devices such as multiple voting right shares, pyramidal structures, cross ownership, and reciprocal holding. In the U.S., firms’ ownership structure is more diffuse. The use of means to separate ownership from control is less present and the control of the large shareholder is lower than in the other sample countries. Being listed on the stock exchange can explain the firm’s ownership structure. Exchange-listed firms, which are generally larger in size than unlisted firms, tend to have more diffused ownership. Further, the legal system hypothesis formulated by La Porta, Lopez-De-Silanes, Shleifer & Vishny (1998) does not hold for the countries we analysed