Determinants of foreign share ownership of the listed companies in selected gulf cooperation council (GCC) countries

• Main Author: Ahmed, Mohammed Gubran Mohammed
• Format: Thesis
• Language: English; English; English
• Published: 2019
• Subjects: HG Finance
• Online Access: https://etd.uum.edu.my/9327/1/depositpermission_s96171.pdf; https://etd.uum.edu.my/9327/2/s96171_01.pdf; https://etd.uum.edu.my/9327/3/s96171_references.docx; https://etd.uum.edu.my/9327/

In recent years, foreign share ownership has been proven to be an important financial source for companies to develop and grow. The objective of this study is to examine the determinants of foreign share ownership in selected Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries. Specifically, this study attempts to examine the relationship between the corporate governance mechanisms, ownership structure, firm performance, adoption of English language for annual reports and foreign share ownership. Moreover, this study used firm size, leverage, political risks, exchange rate risk, inflation risk and economic growth (GDP) as control variables. This study is being established based on fixed effect model and conducted over the period of 2012-2015 for 192 non-financial companies (768 company-year observations) listed on the GCC stock markets. The results demonstrate that foreign share ownership is positively related to the board size, board independence, board expertise, board effectiveness, audit committee independence, audit committee expertise, audit committee effectiveness, firm performance (Tobin`s Q), local institutional investors and the adoption of the English language. With respect to family ownership, the result shows a negative relationship with foreign share ownership. However, the results find no influence of frequency meetings of board, audit committee size, frequency meetings of audit committee and audit quality on foreign share ownership. This comprehensive study contributes novel insights to the existing body of foreign share ownership literature, in that foreign investors prefer companies that have effective governance structures, good performance and provide annual reports in English. The results have implications for policy-makers in developing countries in general, and GCC in particular in their endeavours to improve liquidity on stock markets through the participation of foreign investors. Overall, these results are useful to managers in developing countries who are keen to attract foreign ownership.