Ownership structure heterogeneity and performance: a comparison between listed and unlisted companies

Heterogeneity in ownership structures is an important explanation for differences in corporate strategy and performance: even within the same institutional contest, firms competing in the same industries, with comparable assets and operating scale might present different ownership structures, corporate governance and competitive strategies. The purpose of this paper is to compare the performances of companies that differ under a relevant aspect of their ownership: stock market listing. Therefore we compare the performance of listed companies vis-à-vis their unlisted peers. The aim is to verify whether this difference has an impact on firms’ profitability, financial structure and investment policy. Applying a “paired observations” methodology to a sample of 30 listed companies and 30 unlisted companies, we observe that listed companies tend to grow faster, use less financial leverage, invest less in tangible assets and experience a lower return on equity compared to unlisted ones.