Asian Journal of Business and Accounting 7(2), 2014 ISSN 1985–4064
Institutional Ownership and Firm
Value in Thailand
Yordying Thanatawee*
ABSTRACT
Despite the crucial roles of institutional investors in corporate governance mechanisms, there is little empirical evidence regarding the impact of institutional ownership on firm value in Thailand. This paper examines the relationship between institutional shareholdings and firm value in a sample of 1,451 observations from 323 non- financial firms listed on the Stock Exchange of Thailand (SET) over the period 2007 to 2011. After controlling for firm characteristics and endogeneity problems, the evidence indicates that equity ownership by domestic institutional investors has a positive impact on firm value while higher foreign institutional ownership is associated with lower corporate value. The findings suggest that domestic institutional investors provide effective monitoring roles, thereby increasing corporate governance and firm value, whereas foreign institutional investors are inactive in monitoring the managers and may even expropriate corporate resources at the expense of minority shareholders.
Keywords: Corporate Governance, Domestic Institutional Ownership, Foreign Institutional Ownership, Monitoring Roles, Ownership Structure
JEL Classification: G32, G34
1. Introduction
Since Berle and Means’ (1932) study, the agency problems caused by the separation of ownership and control, and the effects of different types of shareholders on firm value, have received considerable attention in finance literature. According to Jensen and Meckling (1976), the agency problems normally stem from the divergence of interests of
* Yordying Thanatawee is an Assistant Professor of Finance at Graduate School of Commerce,
Burapha University, Chonburi, 20131, Thailand. Email: yordying@yahoo.com
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Yordying Thanatawee
managers who run the firms and those of outside investors who supply the capital. Rather than maximise shareholders’ wealth, a manager might expropriate corporate resources for his own benefits such as spending company’s cash for a lavish office, setting excessive salaries, and undertaking negative Net Present Value projects in order to build empires. These counterproductive activities are definitely detrimental to shareholders’ wealth. One method to reduce agency problems is for large shareholders to exert their powers to control and monitor managers. Hence, large shareholders can play crucial roles in providing effective corporate governance mechanisms, thereby increasing corporate value.
Whether or not large shareholders actively monitor managers’ behaviours depends not only on their equity stakes but also on the country’s quality of legal rules and enforcement. Jensen and Meckling (1976) and Shleifer and Vishny (1986) posit that controlling shareholders have strong incentives to monitor managers when they have substantial investments in the firm. According to La Porta, Lopez-de-Silanes, Shleifer, and Vishny (2000), in emerging countries where ownership structure of firms is highly concentrated and legal protection of minority shareholders is weak, the controlling shareholders will actively monitor managers to protect private benefits of control. However, the controlling shareholders may also expropriate company resources at the expense of minority shareholders when the controlling shareholders are involved in or connected to the management of the company. Therefore, the net effects of major shareholders in creating or destroying firm value are largely dependent on the contexts of investigation.
This paper aims to investigate the influence of major institutional shareholders on firm value in Thailand. The Thai capital market is an interesting setting in which to examine the impact of institutional ownership on firm value, as its landscape is dramatically different from that in the United States (U.S.) and most other developed markets. As documented by La Porta et al. (2000), ownership structure of Thai firms is highly concentrated and the legal rules protecting public investors in Thailand are weak. In addition, most Thai listed firms are controlled by family members, individuals, and related persons (Claessens, Djankow,
& Lang, 2000; Wiwattanakantang, 2001; Aivazian, Booth, & Cleary, 2003). These characteristics create a poor corporate governance environment in which major shareholders can easily expropriate corporate resources for their own private benefits.
2 Asian Journal of Business and Accounting 7(2), 2014
Institutional Ownership and Firm Value in Thailand
Thailand implemented major corporate governance reforms as a result of the Asian financial crisis in 1997.1 Many corporate governance regulations that resemble those in the U.S. and the United Kingdom (U.K.) have been adopted, but the public enforcement of securities regulations appears to be a major hindrance to the effectiveness of the reform due to the intervention of business-owner politicians and politically connected shareholders (Ekkayokkaya & Pengniti, 2012). As a result, the legal environment is still weak and the expropriation risk facing minority shareholders remains high in Thailand. Thus, it is important to investigate whether an institutional investor provides effective monitoring roles and therefore, can be a pivotal mechanism that helps enhance corporate governance and corporate value of Thai listed companies.
The contributions of this paper to the existing literature are as follows: Firstly, this study helps shed some light on the inconclusive evidence regarding the relationship between institutional ownership and firm value. Many studies, for example, McConnell and Servaes (1990), Han and Suk (1998) and Guercio and Hawkins (1999) found a positive relationship between institutional equity ownership and firm value. However, several studies like Agrawal and Knoeber (1996), Faccio and Lasfer (2000), and Mollah, Farooque, and Karim (2012) found an insignificant effect of institutional holdings on firm value. Secondly, there is little research examining the impact of institutional shareholdings on corporate value in Thailand despite the important roles of institutional investors in corporate governance mechanisms. Previous studies such as Wiwattanakantang (2001) and Connelly, Limpaphayom, and Nagarajan (2012) focused on the impact of managerial behaviours or family ownership on firm value. Therefore, examining whether institutional investors are effective in providing monitoring benefits, offers additional insights into how they help improve corporate governance mechanisms and corporate value in an emerging country characterised by weak legal institutions, like Thailand.
Thirdly, this study examines the relationship between institutional ownership and firm value over the period 2007 to 2011 in a sample of 1,451 firm-year observations, thus employing a much larger and more recent sample than previous studies. Wiwattanakantang (2001)
1 Some of the reforms include revisions of the Thai Accounting Standards to conform to the International Accounting Standards, the requirement that all companies listed on the Stock Exchange of Thailand (SET) have an audit committee comprising at least three independent members, and the establishment of the National Corporate Governance Committee. For more details, see Ekkayokkaya and Pengniti (2012).
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Yordying Thanatawee
examined the effects of controlling shareholders on firm value, using a sample of 270 non-financial firms that were listed on the Stock Exchange in Thailand (SET) in 1996, the period before the Asian financial crisis in
1997. As noted by Connelly et al. (2012), the number of family-controlled firms listed on the Thai stock market has decreased substantially since many family firms faced financial problems and became insolvent after 1997. Therefore, using more recent data for empirical analysis can offer better insights into the impacts of ownership structure on corporate value in the new institutional setting of Thai capital markets. Indeed, Connelly et al. (2012) analysed the relationship between family ownership and firm value, using a cross-section data of 216 firms listed on the SET in 2005.
The results of this study show that there is a positive relationship between institutional ownership and firm value. When the institutions are classified into domestic and foreign ones, however, it is found that firm value increases with higher ownership by domestic institutions, but deteriorates with higher ownership by foreign institutions. These findings have important implications regarding the link between institutional ownership and corporate governance in Thai firms. On the one hand, domestic institutional investors appear to be effective in providing monitoring activities, thus mitigating the agency costs of free cash flow that tend to rise when there are large amount of excess cash under the control of managers (For example, rather than disgorging excess cash to shareholders by paying dividends, managers may undertake negative Net Present Value projects to build their empires). On the other hand, foreign institutional investors may be inactive and even conspire with managers to consume corporate resources at the expense of minority shareholders.
The findings of this study offer better insights for policymakers and managers about how to improve corporate governance and increase corporate value via the participation of institutional investors. In addition, the findings provide useful information for investors to make better investment decisions. Moreover, the results of this study regarding the impact of institutional ownership on firm value, may be useful to make comparisons with those found in other countries.
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