Ownership Structure, Firm Performance and Capital Structure of Malaysia Listed Firms

This study investigates the relationship between types of ownership structure and firm performance and capital structure of Malaysian IPOs firms. 80 sample firms listed on the main board of Bursa Malaysia for the years 2004 until 2009 is utilized. this study examines how ownership structure affects the performance and capital structure of 80 Malaysian IPOs firms in 2004, 2005 and 2006. This study determines the impact of ownership structure on market performance and accounting performance using as proxies Tobin's q and Return on Assets (ROA). Then, this study tested the family ownership related to capital structure using the financial leverage. Both ownership concentration variables are found to be positively and statistically significant in influencing dividends in every type of dividend model. The finding is consistent with agency theory since high dividend payments can be used for mitigating agency conflict as dividends can be substituted for shareholder monitoring. Hence, large shareholders have strong incentives to require higher dividend payments in order to reduce monitoring costs. Nevertheless, this study
shows that performance and capital structure of Malaysian firms are not influenced at all by the structure of ownership.