Through a cross section analysis of 196 Canadian firms over the 2001-2004 period, we try to shed light on the impact of ownership on Canadian CEO compensation. Two aspects of ownership are investigated: CEO ownership and the presence of an institutional investor as the controlling shareholder. Our results show that, as CEO stock ownership increases, his compensation decreases then increases, resulting in a U shaped relationship.Using a piecewise specification, we find that CEO compensation is a decreasing function of CEO stockholding up to 35% stake, then it increases, indicating that at levels of ownership greater than 35%, CEOs become entrenched and therefore extract a higher compensation. This result holds for two measures of compensation: cash compensation and total compensation.
Besides, our results suggest that when a firm is controlled by an institutional investor, CEOs receive lower cash compensation as well as lower total compensation. This result indicates that CEO opportunism is reduced in the presence of institutional investors as controlling shareholders which is consisting with the efficient monitoring played by institutional shareholders.