Institutional Ownership and Firm Value

Abstract

Institutional shareholdings have a systematically positive effect on firm value and alter the Morck, Shleifer, and Vishny (1988) finding of a nonmonotonic relation between insider ownership and value. The evidence indicates that, on average, a 1% increase in institutional stock ownership translates to a 0.6% increase in the firm's market-to-book ratio, or an increase of $125M for the mean firm in cross-sectional analysis. Controlling for institutional holdings converts the original MSV finding - that firm value first increases with stock ownership by the board, then decreases, and then increases again - to one in which firm value uniformly increases with greater board ownership. These findings support the view that increased incentives for monitoring both by the board and by institutional investors consistently leads to higher company value. The evidence also indicates that the positive relation between institutional holdings and firm value is stronger in firms with higher discretionary cash flows and in the period following the 1992 adoption of proxy rule amendments that increased the bargaining power of institutions.

Keywords: Institutional ownership, board of directors, insider ownership

JEL Classification: D21, G23, G3