| It has always been the focus of academic work to explore the role of external major shareholders in corporate governance.With the implementation of the reform of non-tradable share structure and the gradual optimization of the environment for major shareholders to reduce their holdings,the liquidity of stocks in the Chinese market has also been improved,which makes it easier for major shareholders of listed companies to increase or reduce their holdings,and also makes the “exit threat” of external major shareholders more credible.In addition to participating in the traditional “voting with hands” and “voting with feet” company governance according to recent studies by scholars,external major shareholders can also realize corporate governance through the way of “withdrawal threat”,because the interests of the controlling shareholders and management of an enterprise are closely related to the stock price,and the withdrawal of external major shareholders will send negative signals to the outside world.As a result,the stock price of the company falls.Therefore,when the external major shareholder threatens to quit,the controlling shareholders and the management shall make active efforts to reduce the behaviors harming the interests of the external major shareholders and improve the management performance,so as to avoid the loss of their own interests.At present,many Chinese scholars have verified the governance effectiveness of the exit threat of external major shareholders based on China’s capital market.However,the academic researches on the threat of the withdrawal of external major shareholders to governance mostly involve the aspects of corporate innovation,corporate investment efficiency,stock price collapse,etc.,while the existing researches rarely involve its impact on corporate performance.Therefore,the influence of the exit threat of external major shareholders on corporate performance is worth exploring.In this context,first of all,this paper reviews the research literature on exit threat and firm performance,summarizes the theoretical basis and hypotheses of principal-agent theory,information asymmetry theory,information transfer theory and shareholder behaviorism theory.Secondly,this paper takes 11,737 annual observation samples of China’s A-share listed companies from 2014 to 2021 as research objects,constructs measurement models and research models of relevant variables,and uses stata17 software to conduct descriptive statistics,correlation analysis and regression analysis of panel data.The empirical study of the effect of excessively high outside Stockholders on firm performance and methods of drawing conclusions from different interpretations of fuzzy pressure and strength factors.Finally,the study suggests that practical recommendations should be made to companies,regulators and governments.The main conclusions of this paper are as follows:(1)The exit threat of external major shareholders can positively promote the improvement of corporate performance.(2)The exit threat of external major shareholders can improve corporate performance by alleviating the two types of agency costs.(3)The exit threat of external major shareholders can promote the improvement of corporate performance by increasing analyst attention.(4)With the increase of the number of external major shareholders,the withdrawal threat of external major shareholders has a stronger effect on the improvement of corporate performance.(5)Compared with State-owned enterprise,the exit threat of external major shareholders plays a stronger role in improving corporate performance in Non-state-owned enterprises.Based on the above conclusions,this paper puts forward suggestions from the perspectives of enterprises,governments and regulators.This paper enriches the research on corporate performance,verifies the governance effect of external major shareholders from the perspective of threat of exit,and provides references for external major shareholders to participate in corporate governance and improve corporate performance. |
