Does share-holding pattern affect firm performance? Evidence from India

In this paper, we investigate the impact of promoters and institutional investors' equity ownership on the firm performance in the Indian context. Using a sample of 1583 firms during 2010-2019, our results suggest a positive relation between promoter ownership and firm performance, supporting the alignment effect, where the interests of promoters and managers align in the same direction. On the one hand, our results support the global advantage hypothesis in that the foreign institutional investors (FIIs) positively impact the firm performance, implying that the FIIs are vigilant shareholders, and actively monitor the firm performance. On the other hand, we reject the hometown advantage hypothesis since the domestic institutional investors (DIIs) like banks and other financial institutions are found to have negative relation with firm performance. Overall, we conclude that shareholding pattern does affect the firm performance. Our results are insensitive to various robustness tests.