Ownership structure, corporate performance and failure: Evidence from panel data of emerging market the case of Jordan

Abstract

This study investigates the impact of ownership structure (mix and concentrate) on a company's performance and failure in a panel estimation using 167 Jordanian companies during 1989-2006. The empirical evidence in this paper shows that ownership structure and ownership concentration play an important role in the performance and value of Jordanian firms. It shows that inefficiency is related to ownership concentration and to institutional ownership. A negative correlation between ownership concentration and firm's performance both, ROA and Tobin's Q, is found, while there is a positive impact on firm performance MBVR. The research also found that there is a significant negative relationship between government ownership and a firm's accounting performance, while the other ownership structure mixes have significant coefficients only in Tobin's Q using the matched sample. Firm's profitability ROA was negatively and significantly correlated with the fraction of institutional ownership, and positively and significantly related to the market performance measure, MBVR. The result is robust when indicators of both concentration and ownership mix are included in the regressions. The results of this study are, to some extent, inconsistent with previous findings. This paper also used ownership structure to predict the corporate failure. The results suggest that government ownership is negatively related to the likelihood of default. Government ownership decreases the likelihood of default, but has a negative impact on a firm's performance. The results suggest that, in order to increase a firm's performance and decrease the likelihood of default, it is reasonable to reduce government ownership to some extent. Furthermore, a certain degree of ownership concentration is needed to increase the firm's performance and to decrease the firm's chance of default.