Share Ownership and Corporate Performance: Corporate Governance, Firm Performance and Dividends Payout in India

This MPhil thesis examines whether the corporate governance framework (ownership structure) influence the firm performance and dividends payout policy. We consider the effect of interactions between corporate, foreign, institutional, and managerial ownership on the firm performance and profits payout policy for an unbalanced panel of 2478 Indian corporate firms over 1994 to 2000.We find that after controlling for observed firm characteristics and unobserved firm heterogeneity, using a fixed-effects panel data framework, the shareholding by institutional investors and directors affects firm performance. We also find that the equity ownership by dominant group influences firm-performance only in case of managerial ownership. We find no evidence in favor of the endogeneity of ownership structure. Unobserved firm heterogeneity is found to be significant. We also find that the ownership by foreign and corporates does not influence firm performance.In analyzing the dividends payout behavior, we suggest an empirical model explain the dividend payout behavior, with the help of a firm's financial structure and investment opportunities along with dividends, earnings, and ownership structure. Using a fixed-effects panel data approach, we find evidence of dividends' dependence on past dividends. Ownership by the corporate and directors is positively related to profits payout in level, and corporate ownership is negatively related in its square. Institutional ownership has an inverse effect on dividends in comparison to corporate ownership in standards as well as in its squares.We find no evidence in favor of an association between foreign ownership and dividend payout growth. We also find support for the hypothesis of a positive association between dividends and past earnings. Debt equity is found to be negatively associated, whereas recent investment opportunities are positively associated with dividends payout. We do not find evidence of the tax or group affiliation effect on payout policy.