A THEORITICAL REVIEW OF THE IMPACT OF PORFOLIO DIVERSIFICATION ON FINANCIAL PERFORMANCE OF INVESTMENT FIRMS LISTED IN NAIROBI SECURITIES EXCHANGE, KENYA

Abstract

The concept of diversification has taken a universal centre stage in the process of management and continues to be an increasingly important aspect of doing business in the world of today. The relationship between diversification and firm performance has formed the subject of many researches but many researchers have disagreed on the nature of the relationship between diversification and performance. Because of the contradictory results concerning the relationship between diversification and performance, the question of whether diversification improves or worsens firm performance is still worthy of further research such as the one being undertaken in this study. In addition, despite the existence of these studies, very little attention has been given to the developing countries. Besides, the impact of diversification on firm performance has not received adequate research attention in Kenya. The study will examine the Impact of portfolio diversification on financial performance of investment firms listed in the NSE in Kenya. The study will take an explanatory non experimental research design. The target population for the study will be the investment firms listed in the NSE. A census total of 5 investment firms will be considered. Data collection will be done using secondary data to be obtained from the company websites, handbooks, printed materials from the NSE and CMA. The five firms are Olympia capital holdings, Tran century limited, centum investments, Home Africa limited and Kurwitu ventures. The study will span between 2011 and 2016. The study will employ the panel regression model to analyze the impact of portfolio diversification on   financial performance of investment firms listed in the NSE. Given that the data had both time series and cross sectional dimensions, the study estimated a linear panel regression. Panel data analysis is more advantageous than either cross-section or time series alone because it allows the researcher to account for unobservable heterogeneity. The panel methodology will be aided by STATA 13.0 software. After extracting data from the financial statements, an Excel program will be used to compute the relevant values for each of the companies across time. The data will then be formatted in STATA long form before being imported to STATA from Excel. Descriptive statistics will be used to summarize and profile Stocks, real estate, bonds and the combined Impact of the three and performance among companies listed in the NSE. Feasible Generalised Least Square estimation will be performed after accounting for various violations of classical linear regression assumptions. Panel data can be estimated using any of the following models: pooled effects or constant effects, random effects, and fixed effects.

Keywords: diversification, performance, financial markets, portfolio, stock exchange