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Why Do Firms Become Widely Held? An Analysis of the ynamics of Corporate Ownership

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Author Info
Jean Helwege
Christo Pirinsky
René M. Stulz

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Abstract

We consider IPO firms from 1970 to 2001 and examine the evolution of their insider ownership over time to understand better why and how U.S. firms that become widely held do so. In our sample, a majority of firms has insider ownership below 20% after ten years. We find that a firm's stock market performance and trading play an extremely important role in its insider ownership dynamics. Firms that experience large decreases in insider ownership and/or become widely held are firms with high valuations, good recent stock market performance, and liquid markets for their stocks. In contrast and surprisingly, variables suggested by agency theory have limited success in explaining the evolution of insider ownership.

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Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number 11505.

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Date of creation: Aug 2005
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Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:11505

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Find related papers by JEL classification:
G30 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - General
G32 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Financing Policy; Capital and Ownership Structure
D0 - Microeconomics - - General

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Cited by:
(explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)

  1. Irena Grosfeld, 2006. "Ownership concentration and firm performance: Evidence from an emerging market," PSE Working Papers 2006-18, PSE (Ecole normale supérieure). [Downloadable!]
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