Anna Blajer-Gołębiewska “The Ownership Structure and the Performance of the Polish Stock Listed Companies”, Journal of International Studies, Vol. 3, No 1, 2010, pp. 18-27.

The Ownership Structure and the Performance of the Polish Stock Listed Companies

Anna Blajer-Gołębiewska

Department of Microeconomics

Faculty of Economics

University of Gdańsk

a.blajer@ug.edu.pl

Abstract. The ownership of a company can be classified into inside ownership and outside ownership. According to Alignment Theory, there is a positive relation between the inside ownership and a company performance. However, there have been some researches that indicate the opposite relation. This is explained by the Enhancement Theory.

The aim of the research is to indentify of the relationship between shareholders structure and the company’s performance in case of the Polish stock listed companies. The research is based on data for companies listed on the main market of the Warsaw Stock Exchange.

The main thesis is that there is no evident the relation between shareholders structure and company’s performance as the optimal ownership structure depends on a wide array of factors such as branch, market concentration, costs structure etc. As a result, it is also hard to indicate the optimal percentage of inside ownership, which is needed for profit optimization. The first stage of task realization was the analysis of various theories on relationship between ownership structure and the company’s performance. Then ownership characteristics and financial characteristics were determined and analysed. The last stage was the analysis of correlation between ownership structure and the Polish stock listed companies’ performance.

Submitted: May, 2010

1^st revision: June, 2010

Accepted: July, 2010

Keywords: Capital and Ownership Structure, Firm Performance, Financial Market, Corporate Finance and Governance

JEL classification: L25, L33, P2