Institutional Ownership and Commercial Banks Performance in Kenya: is there a Relationship?

Abstract

Institutional ownership of commercial banks is of great importance given that it as an internal corporate governance mechanism. Different levels of institutional ownership in firms as revealed by recent studies indicate significance differences in their monitoring capability that subsequently impact on performance. Institution ownership, such as those made through pension funds and insurance companies play a critical role in influencing the firm’s performance, owing to the knowledge and experience they posses. This study sought to ascertain the relationship between institutional ownership and performance of commercial banks in Kenya that are licensed as companies under the Company Act Cap 486 and as banks under the Banking Act Cap 488. A survey was undertaken on 43 commercial banks that were operational between year 2001 and 2013. Bank performance was defined by three performance indicators namely: return on asset, return on equity and Tobin’s Q ratio whereas bank size was adopted as a moderating variable. Secondary data was collected from: annual financial reports, The Kenya Banking Survey 2013, Central Bank of Kenya bank’s annual supervisory reports, commercial banks websites, Central Bank of Kenya website, Bankscope, and annual returns filed by banks found at the Registrar of companies at the Attorney General Chambers Nairobi and returns filled at The Nairobi Security Exchange by listed banks. The data collected was analyzed using both descriptive statistics and inferential statistics where hierarchical regression under the panel data framework with the help of SPSS version 21.0 software was used. The findings of the study indicated that there is no relationship between institutional ownership and performance of commercial banks in Kenya when ROE, ROA and TBQ were used as performance measures and that bank size ha a moderating effect in this relationship.

Keywords and Abbreviations: Institutional ownership, corporate governance, Central Bank of Kenya, institutional investors ,firm performance

V.I.F.-Variance inflation factor, ROA-Return on asset, ROE-Return on equity, TBQ-Tobin’s Q ratioCBK-Central Bank of Kenya, CEO- Chief Executive officer.