Blockholders are defined as those stockholders who hold more than 5% of the holdings.
These investors are required to report to the authorities once they obtain more than 5% of the
holdings and whenever their holdings change by more than 1%. The blockholders’ role in
Korea is rather limited compared with that in the US since minority shareholders’ rights are
not well protected in Korea.
3. The relationship between ownership structure and earnings informativeness
3.1. The owner–largest shareholder and earnings informativeness
As discussed, the relationship between ownership and earnings informativeness can
possibly be explained using two opposing views suggested in the finance literature—
convergence of interest and management entrenchment hypotheses. The former is based on
the classic agency theory by Jensen and Meckling (1976). The researchers suggest that
agency costs decrease as owner’s ownership interest increases. Investors may perceive that
the owner–largest shareholder behaves in a way to maximize firm value when the owner’s
holding is large, and in this case, convergence of interest between the owner and outside
investors occurs.
Therefore, investors will impose fewer contractual constraints on the firm, and the owner is
less motivated to manage earnings. Also, owners will maintain a disclosure policy that is
consistent with firm value maximization. Investors will perceive the earnings quality of these
firms to be high. Under the scenario of convergence of interest, we expect that the higher the
owner’s holdings, the greater the earnings informativeness—a positive relationship. This is
consistent with evidence by Warfield, Wild, and Wild (1995) who report that earnings
informativeness is positively related to insider holdings.8
The opposing view is that management entrenchment could occur when insider holdings
are high (Morck et al., 1988), causing a moral hazard and information-asymmetry problem
between the insiders (owner–manager) and outside investors. Management decisions will
likely be made to benefit the personal wealth of the owner, and expropriation of minority
shareholders by the controlling owner could also occur.9
Under a weak governance system, monitoring will be more difficult to perform as the
owner’s holdings increase. Outside investors will be motivated to impose more accounting
constraints on the firm, but owners who have complete discretionary power could respond by
manipulating earnings through discretionary accruals, thus lowering the reliability of earnings
and earnings quality. This will result in the reduction of stock price informativeness of those
earnings. Under this scenario, there will be a negative relationship between the owner’s
holdings and earnings informativeness