Krivogorsky and Burton (2012) examine the association between dominant shareholders and firm performance for 1,533 firms from seven Continental European countries using ownership data from 2005 to 2007. The primary analysis in the paper tests the effects of four separate types of dominant owners (institutions, blockholders, banks, and individuals and families) on two measures of accounting performance (return on assets and return on shareholder funds) and a measure of firm value (market-to-book ratio). Supplemental tests examine cross-sectional differences in the effects of each type of dominant owner across individual countries. The main results indicate that banks and individual and family owners have a positive effect on firm performance, while institutions and blockholders have a negative effect on firm performance. The evidence from the within-country tests shows that the relation between particular shareholder types and firm performance varies across different jurisdictions, with dominant owners generally having a positive effect.
Dominant...
