105 Revista Mentoring & Coaching Número 3 (2010) · 99

4.1. Sample

The sample of this research comprises a panel of 13,553 firm-year observations during the period of 1998-2008, for which the ownership and financial data needed for the analysis are available, and the other panel of 15,396 firm-year observations of financial sheets from 1994-2008. These two panel data represent 1,575 A-share firms listed on the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges in China. A share on Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges refers to those that are traded in Renminbi, the currency in mainland China.

Financial data and Corporate Governance data for the research are obtained from China Center for Economic Research (CCER), which is one of the leading data providers in China, which collects financial and Corporate Governance information from company annual reports as well as from the Chinese stock exchanges.

Since 2007, listed firms are asked by the China Security Regulatory Commission (CSRC, the stock market’s regulatory authority) to disclose information about their ultimate controllers. Before the enactment of this regulation, ultimate controllers were difficult to identify because of lack of transparency. Thanks to the disclosure of the ultimate controller of firms, we can get a clear overview of the distribution of different types of firms. There are all in all six different types of firms categorized. The weights of each type of firm for the ten years and for each year are shown as follows in Table 2 and Table 3. We can see that state-owned firms take about three- fourth of all the 12804 observations, which disclose their ultimate controllers. In the early years like late 1990th, this percentage is even larger, in 1998 it is almost 90%. Nevertheless this percentage decreases over years and the openness of the stock market. In 2008, this ratio is 60%. In contrary, the type of family-owned firms takes the second place in all samples and also in each year. From the data we can see the incomparably growth of family firms – the ratio increases steadily all the way from 6% in 1998 to 37% in 2008.

Table 2: The Frequency of Types of Ultimate Controller From 1998-2008

Type Freq. Percent Cum.

0.State-owned 9,098 71.06 71.06 1.Family-owned 3,028 23.65 94.70 2.Foreign owned 106 0.83 95.53 3.Collective owned 245 1.91 97.45 4.Social organization 70 0.55 97.99 5.Employee controlled 95 0.74 98.73 6.Not to recognize 162 1.27 100.00 Total 12,804 100.00

*Types of ultimate controller are the types of the largest shareholder of the firm.

Table 3: The Frequency of Types of Ultimate Controller Each Year From 1998-2008

Type of Ultimate Controller

Year State-owned Family-owned Foreign founded Collective owned Social organization Employee controlled Not to recognize Total

1998 71 5 0 2 1 0 2 81 87.65 6.17 0 2.47 1.23 0 2.47 100.00 1999 763 67 9 31 8 7 32 917 83.21 9.12 0.98 3.38 0.87 0.76 3.49 100.00 2000 863 96 9 33 7 8 37 1,053 81.96 9.12 0.85 3.13 0.66 0.76 3.51 100.00 2001 920 120 8 33 6 8 35 1,13 81.42 10.62 0.71 2.92 0.53 0.71 3.10 100.00 2002 923 184 10 28 5 7 35 1,192 77.43 15.44 0.84 2.35 0.42 0.59 3.10 100.00 2003 917 270 8 28 7 8 11 1,249 73.42 21.62 0.64 2.24 0.56 0.64 0.88 100.00 2004 928 351 7 23 20 12 2 1,343 69.10 26.14 0.52 1.71 1.49 0.89 0.15 100.00 2005 928 372 6 17 5 13 1 1,342 69.15 27.72 0.45 1.27 0.37 0.97 0.07 100.00 2006 918 454 7 18 5 15 4 1,421 64.60 31.95 0.49 1.27 0.35 1.06 0.28 100.00 2007 919 530 10 28 4 13 1 1,505 61.06 35.22 0.66 1.86 0.27 0.86 0.07 100,00 2008 948 579 32 4 2 4 2 1,571 60.34 36.86 2.04 0.25 0.13 0.25 0.13 100.00 Total 9,098 3,028 106 245 70 95 162 12,804 71.06 23.65 0.83 1.91 0.55 0.74 1.27 100.00

4.2. Variables

Table 4 introduces all the variables going to be used in the analyses.

Table 4: Descriptions of All the Variables Used in the Analyses

Variable Description

Family-controlled firm Since 2007,listed firms are asked by the China Security Regulatory Commission (the stock market’s regulatory authority) to disclose information about their ultimate controllers. Before the enactment of this regular, ultimate controllers were difficult to identify because of lack of transparency. This so-called ultimate controller is actually the type of the largest shareholder. In this survey family firm is a dummy variable. 1-family firm, 0-non-family firm. Source:CCER.

State-controlled firm The same way to identify as family firms, the ultimate controller is Chinese Government. They are either directly controlled or through a brokerage firm.

ROA Return on assets. Computed as net income over average of total assets at the beginning and at the end of year. Source:CCER.

Total assets The sum of current and long-term assets owned by the company. Source:CCER

Tobin's q Ratio of the market value of a company's stock with the value of a company's equity book value. Since Chinese situation is more complicated, because of the non-tradable shares in the past, Tobin's q value here is calculated as (tradable market value+ non-tradable share value+ current debt+long-term debt)/total assets. Source: CCER

Sales growth Growth rate of sales. The difference of revenue of this year and revenue of last year, divided by last year's revenue. Source: CCER

Ln(total assets) Natural logarithm of total assets. Source: CCER Ownership concentration Shareholding ratio of the largest shareholder of the firm.

Source: CCER Restraint of ownership

concentration

Sum of the second to tenth largest shareholding ratios divided by the largest shareholding ratio. Source: CCER Board size Number of people on the board of directors of the firm.

Source: CCER

Shareholding of CEO Shareholding ratio of the CEO of the firm. Source: CCER

Shareholding of board Shareholding ratio of board of directors of the firm. Source: CCER

Shareholding of board Chair

Shareholding ratio of the chairman of the board of directors of the firm. Source: CCER

Duality Dummy variable, whether CEO and chairman or vice- chairman of board of directors is the same person. Yes-1, no- 0. Source: CCER

Debt to equity ratio Ratio of the sum of long-term Debt and current debt tototal book value of equity. Source: CCER

Two measures of firm performance are used, namely Tobin’s q and return on assets (ROA). These are the dependent variables. Explanatory variables are the family dummy variable, ownership concentration, restraint of ownership concentration, board size, shareholding of CEO, shareholding of board, shareholding of Board Chair, duality of CEO and Board Chair, debt to equity ratio, ln (total assets) and sales growth. The effects of different industries, family intensiveness are also checked in the regressions which will be presented later on.