EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Changes in ownership concentration in mass privatizd firms: Evidence from Poland and the Czech Republic

Irena Grosfeld and Iraj Hashi ()

Post-Print from HAL

Abstract: We analyse the changes in ownership concentration in firms included in two mass privatisation programmes in Poland and the Czech Republic. We find that despite important differences in the design of the two privatisation schemes and despite different quality of regulatory environments, the ownership structure emerging 4-5 years after the initial distribution of assets is remarkably similar in the two countries. Ownership concentration defined as the share of the largest equity holder has significantly increased. Exploring the determinants of ownership concentration, we check whether such revealed preference for higher participation in firm equity does not hide different motivations and behaviour of investors. Our results reveal interesting differences between the two countries: in the Czech Republic the increase in ownership concentration was less likely in poorly performing firms, while in Poland the quality of past performance did not affect investors' willingness to increase their holdings. This contrasting result may reflect the difference in the quality of laws and regulations in Poland and in the Czech Republic. In the Czech Republic, where tunnelling was a common practice in the period covered by our study, shareholders increasing their stakes in a company could have been motivated by the objective of extracting value rather than by the willingness to impose a specific direction on the way the firm is managed. This might explain why they prefer to increase their control in those companies which perform well rather than those that perform poorly.

Keywords: Ownership concentration; Mass privatisation; Corporate governance; Transition (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007-07
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (15)

Published in Corporate Governance: An International Review, 2007, 15 (4), pp.529-543. ⟨10.1111/j.1467-8683.2007.00585.x⟩

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
Journal Article: Changes in Ownership Concentration in Mass Privatised Firms: evidence from Poland and the Czech Republic (2007) Downloads
Working Paper: Changes in ownership concentration in mass privatizd firms: Evidence from Poland and the Czech Republic (2007)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:halshs-00754216

DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8683.2007.00585.x

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-31
Handle: RePEc:hal:journl:halshs-00754216