The impacts of managerial and institutional ownership on firm performance: The role of stock price informativeness and corporate governance

Abstract

This paper provides new evidence on the relations between managerial and institutional ownerships and firm performance. These relations are found to be affected by firm’s stock price informativeness and corporate governance. Based on a sample of US firms from NYSE, AMEX, and NASDAQ between 1989 and 2006, we document three important findings. First, managerial ownership and firm future performance are non-linearly related; the positive relation is stronger for firms with less informative prices or more agency problems. This finding suggests that poor governance and uninformative price increase the importance of managerial value creation for their firms by improving internal governance. Second, institutional ownership has a significant positive impact on firm future performance, with larger impact for firms with less informative prices or good governance. However, institutional ownership, which reflects external monitoring, has a weaker positive effect compared to managerial ownership, which controls for internal governance. Third, the interaction between managerial ownership and institutional ownership has a significant positive impact on firm future performance, suggesting that there are synergistic effects of internal and external corporate governance mechanisms in improving firm value.