The influence of ownership structure on performance of Ghanaian insurance and banking firms

Abstract

As at 2005, Ghana diversified 351 state-owned enterprises (either fully or partially owned), which attracted a substantial foreign direct investment into the country. This was to introduce efficiency into the management of these public enterprises, hence, the belief that ownership and, in particular, specific type of composition of corporate ownership structure has an impact on a firm's performance. This paper examines the influence of ownership structure on firm performance in Ghana as one of the buoyant and emerging economies in Sub-Saharan Africa. Using data from a period of2000-2010, panel regression was employed to analyze the impact of three major types of ownership structure and the determinants of performance. The ownership structures that are employed in this study are: (1) foreign ownership, (2) Government ownership, and (3) Close corporations. Using two accounting-based measures of financial performance (i.e. return on equity (ROE) and return on asset (ROA), and based on the sample of banks and insurance firms the result showed that both closed corporations and government-owned firms did not perform better than the foreign owned firms. The study also found that inflation and exchange rate are the two main macroeconomic variables that influence firm performance.