Ownership structure and bank performance: An emerging market perspective

This study investigates whether ownership type does matter for bank performance in an emerging market. By tracing the identity of top owners, I group large shareholder of China’s commercial banks into government, state owned enterprises (SOEs), domestic private investors and foreign investors. These distinct types of shareholders have multiple motivations and incentives, in turn, this will affect how they perform their control rights and monitor over the invested banks. The main findings regarding the impact of ownership structure on bank performance suggest that banks with high state shareholding tend to have poorer performance and low profitability, consistent with much of the literature. In addition, banks with higher domestic privately shareholders are generally operated more profitably. Furthermore, higher foreign ownership may negatively affect bank performance. Moreover, ownership type diversity is positively associated with bank performance, and banks with concentrated ownership are worse performing. My findings are robustness under the different measures of bank performance.