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Legal Person Ownership, Diversification Strategy and Firm Profitability in China

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Abstract

Legal person ownership is the second largest ownership identity in China’s public listed companies, yet it has received limited attention compared to the already extensive research on China’s state ownership. We investigate the relationships between the concentration of legal person shareholding, product diversification and firm performance for China’s listed companies. We find that relying on legal person shareholder as a lever for more profit-oriented governance cannot be an unqualified linear prescription, but it has this effect only if legal person shareholders have a high level of ownership concentration and are not in a minority ownership position.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Business Policy, National University of Singapore, 117592, Singapore

    Andrew Delios & Zhi Jian Wu

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  1. Andrew Delios
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  2. Zhi Jian Wu
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Correspondence to Andrew Delios.

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Delios, A., Wu, Z.J. Legal Person Ownership, Diversification Strategy and Firm Profitability in China. J Manage Governance 9, 151–169 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10997-005-4034-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10997-005-4034-9

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