理解企业多元化经营的新视角:控股股东的影响

A New Perspective to Understand Firm's Diversification:The Effect of Controlling Shareholder

多元化经营在现实企业中普遍存在,这也吸引了大量研究探寻企业多元化经营的动机。已有文献主要关注企业本身多元化经营,忽略了控股股东因素,从而存在一定的认知偏差。不同于已有文献,基于手工搜集数据,本文首次考察了控股股东多元化经营与上市公司多元化经营之间的关系及其影响因素。研究发现,首先,控股股东多元化经营与上市公司多元化经营之间存在着一定的替代关系,说明控股股东将上市公司多元化经营作为其整体多元化经营战略的一部分;其次,从影响机制上看,控股股东持有上市公司的权益在其总资产中份额越高、其他大股东持股比例越高、上市公司所处地区市场化程度越高,控股股东多元化经营与上市公司多元化经营之间的替代关系会越弱,说明那些有助于减轻控股股东对上市公司进行干预的因素将会弱化这种关系。本文为理解企业多元化经营行为以及企业与其控股股东的关系提供了新的视角。

Diversification is a business strategy widely adopted by listed firms.Meanwhile,many listed firms in China belong to specific conglomerates,which usually invest in many firms and operate in many industries.In other words,the controlling shareholders of many listed firms also adopt diversification strategy themselves.A natural question is,what is the relationship between a list firm's diversification and its controlling shareholder's diversification?Diversification is an important topic in financial research.Existing researches show that,the incentives for firms to adopt diversification strategy mainly include diversifying risks,establishing internal capital market,achieving scope economy,gaining market power,etc.We can see that existing researches mainly investigate the incentives of diversification from the internal perspective of firms.Are there any external factors that will affect firm's diversification strategy?In addition,a lot of researches show that controlling shareholder has an important influence on firm's operation.The equity of a listed firm held by the controlling shareholder is a part of its total investment.Then,will the controlling shareholder take a listed firm's diversification strategy as a part of its overall diversification strategy?If so,a listed firm's diversification strategy will be affected by the diversification strategy of its controlling shareholder.For this reason,when we study the related topics of diversification,we will result in a serious misunderstanding if we don t consider the effect of controlling shareholder’s diversification.Based on a manually collected dataset of 639 listed firms in China from 2002 to 2013,this paper investigates for the first time the relationship between controlling shareholder’s diversification and listed firm's diversification and its determinants.Major findings include:firstly,there is a substitution relationship between controlling shareholder’s diversification and listed firm's diversification,indicating that controlling shareholder takes listed firm's diversification as a part of its overall diversification strategy;secondly,those factors that help to alleviate the intervention of controlling shareholder in listed firms will weaken the above substitution relationship.Specifically,when the equity of a listed firm held by controlling shareholder occupies a higher percentage in its total assets,or the share held by other major shareholders is higher,or the degree of marketization of the region where the listed firm is located is higher,the substitution relationship between controlling shareholder’s diversification and listed firm's diversification is weaker.Our paper makes important contributions to the literature in the following two aspects.Firstly,this paper investigates for the first time the incentive for firm's diversification from the perspective of controlling shareholder,which provides a new perspective for understanding firm's diversification.Our evidence verifies the substitution relationship between controlling shareholder’s diversification and listed firm's diversification,which enriches the literature on the incentive for firm's diversification and has innovational theoretical significance.Secondly,this paper enriches the research on the relationship between firms and their controlling shareholders.Existing researches show that controlling shareholder has an important influence on firm's behaviors.The influence of controlling shareholder on a firm can be divided into two categories:tunneling or propping.The means used for tunneling include capital occupying,cash dividends,unfair related party transactions or loans,merges&acquisitions,etc.This research shows that,in addition to above-mentioned means,the controlling shareholder can tunnel the interest of a listed firm through risk sharing.In other words,the controlling shareholder tends to take a listed firm's diversification strategy as a part of its overall diversification strategy,and intervenes in the listed firm's decision-making of diversification,which may help the controlling shareholder diversify risks at the cost of the listed firm.