SSE/EFI Working Paper Series in Economics and Finance
No 364:
Agency Costs of Controlling Minority Shareholders
Henrik Cronqvist ()
and Mattias Nilsson ()
Abstract: This paper estimates the agency costs of controlling
minority shareholders (CMSs), who have control of a firm's votes, while
owning only a minority of the cash flow rights. Analyzing a panel of 309
listed Swedish firms during 1991 - 1997, for which we have complete and
detailed data on ownership and corporate control instruments, we provide
three results: (i) Families employ CMS structures, via dual-class shares
and other corporate control instruments, about 1.5 - 2 times more often
than other categories of owners (corporations, financial institutions).
(ii) Estimated agency costs of controlling shareholders are 6 - 25% of firm
value (Tobin's q) for the median firm among the different categories of
controlling owners, ceteris paribus. Family CMSs are associated with the
largest discount on firm value. (iii) The source of the discount seems to
be partly what such owners/firms do: return on assets (ROA) is
significantly lower for firms with concentrated vote control. It also seems
as if the discount is related to what such owners/firms do not do. Family
CMSs seem to hang on to the control too long from non-controlling
shareholders' perspective; e.g., firms with family CMSs are about 50% less
likely to be taken over compared to other firms.
Keywords: Agency costs; Corporate control; Ownership structures; Corporate governance; (follow links to similar papers)
JEL-Codes: G32; G34; (follow links to similar papers)
39 pages, March 10, 2000, Revised September 2002
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- This paper is published as:
-
Cronqvist, Henrik and Mattias Nilsson, (2003), 'Agency Costs of Controlling Minority Shareholders', Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Vol. 38, pages 695-719
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