Corporate Proprietorship and Performance of Listed Conglomerates in Nigeria

Abstract

This paper is based on the fact that many study on Corporate Proprietorship and performance was focused on developed countries such as USA, China among others. There is paucity of study in developing economic in West African country especially in Nigeria considering it’s political, economic, and institutional conditions compare to developed countries. Therefore, this study seeks to investigate how Corporate Proprietorship variables impacted on performance of listed conglomerate firms in Nigeria. Data were gleaned from published financial reports for the period of 2010 to 2014 from a sample of the six listed conglomerates. The study adopted correlation and ex post facto research designs using multiple regression models. The result revealed that managerial proprietorship, institutional proprietorship, proprietorship concentration, firms’ size, and firms’ age have negative impact on return on equity while institutional proprietorship has positive and significant impact on return on equity. The study also reveals that managerial proprietorship, proprietorship concentration, firms’ size and firms’ age has negative impact on net profit margin. While, institutional proprietorship has negative and significant impact on net profit margin. The study concludes that Corporate Proprietorship has positive and significant impact on performance with adjusted squares of 22% and 48% at significance levels of 0.050 and 0.001 respectively. It is recommended based on the findings that the management of conglomerates should allocate more shares to the various institution such as large financial organizations, pension funds or endowments institutions to increase the returns to the firms among others.

Keywords: Managerial Ownership, Institutional Proprietorship, Ownership Concentration, Firms’     Size, Firms’ Age, Return on Equity and net profit margin