Ownership and Financing Structures of Listed and Large Non-listed Corporations

Abstract

In this paper, we use a large data set of more than 10,000 firms for 19 European countries in order to compare the ownership and financing structures, and performance of listed (LCs) and large non-listed companies (NLCs). For the overall sample, we find that the vast majority NLCs have either a large or medium blockholder. This contrasts the ownership structure of LCs, which usually have no blockholder with over 50 percent stake. Moreover, we present information on typology of ultimate blockholders as well as financial ratios in LCs and NLCs. The results from matched-pairs analysis, employed in order to directly compare the two categories, suggest that NLCs’ financing structures are more geared towards debt and of shorter term. Although NLCs use relatively less fixed assets, they appear more capital intensive than LC. In terms of performance, NLCs have higher returns on assets and equity than LCs do, but lower margins, with these differences to remain when conducting multivariate regressions. Overall, the results suggest that, while ownership structures and corporate governance mechanisms differ between NLCs and LCs, these differences do not affect their performance materially.

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