Corporate ownership and ESG performance

Belén Villalonga, Peter Tufano and Boya Wang

Journal of Corporate Finance, 2025, vol. 91, issue C

Abstract: Using a sample of 3083 firms from 62 countries over 18 years, we analyze how the structure and identity of firms' material owners influence their Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) performance. We find that firms with founding families or other individual investors as owners underperform, unless family members serve as CEOs, when they outperform all others. Non-family management and government entities also perform significantly better in most analyses. These results are robust to multiple data and methodological stress tests. Our findings show that ownership matters for ESG performance and give us an indication of the preferences of different types of owners regarding ESG.

Keywords: Ownership; ESG; CSR; Family firms; Environment; Social responsibility; Sustainability; Corporate governance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:corfin:v:91:y:2025:i:c:s0929119924001949

DOI: 10.1016/j.jcorpfin.2024.102732

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