The Impact of Family Owned Firms on Firms' Performance: A Study on Malaysian Listed Firms

This study explores the impact of family owned firms towards firms' performance. Basically, this study adapted the model that has been applied by Andres (2008). This
study wants to whether there is performance differences based on family control in the firms. From a total number of 102 firms' observation, 79 firms have been selected as sample from the total number of Initial Public Offering (IPO) in Bursa Malaysia Main Market, from 2004 to 2006. From a number of 79 firms, 49 firms have been identified as family owned firms and 30 firms are non-family owned firms. Thus, this study found that family owned firms have significant relationship to the firms' market based performance but have no significant relationship to the
firms' accounting based performance. Nevertheless, non-family owned firms have greater Tobin's Q than family owned firms. Other than that, this study found that dividend has significant relationship to the market based performance (as measured by Tobin's Q) but not significant to the accounting based performance. Firm size is found to have significant relationship to ROA (EBIT) and is not significant to ROA (EBITDA) and Tobin's Q. However, capital structure has significant relationship to both of the accounting based and market based performance.