Existing literatures indicate that, in Nontradable Shares Reform, institutional
investors collude with nontradable shareholders (controlling shareholders) to help
them settle a lower compensation ratio. Classifying institutional investors into mutual
funds and non-mutual funds, this paper presents a further research upon whether fund
governance helps mitigate collusion.
Due to the rigorous entry qualifications, and the worldwide reputation as hostage,
a foreign background fund is expected to have better governance quality than a
domestic fund. Our empirical evidence shows that, relative to those dominated by
domestic funds, mutual funds dominated by foreign background funds are less
inclined to collude with nontradable shareholders. Introducing foreign institutional
investors into domestic markets is Chinese government’s consistent policy. Our
evidence indicates that this policy may be beneficial to the sound development of
Chinese stock markets.
Meanwhile, we find no sufficient evidence that mutual funds dominated by
open-end funds are less inclined to collude with nontradable shareholders, although an
open-end fund is expected to have better governance quality than a closed-end fund
due to the redemption mechanism.
As for the effect of ownership structure, it is found that mutual funds with a
lower institutional ownership are less inclined to collude with nontradable
shareholders. Fund governance seems to deteriorate as institutional ownership
increases. Providing an implication for policy making, our evidence suggests that
restricting the proportion of fund shares held by institutions may help improve fund
governance in China.
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