Purpose – This study employees cash flow rights and the contestability of multiple large shareholders to explore the impact of multiple large shareholders on investment efficiency in Chinese setting.
Theoretical framework – We introduce Asymmetric Information Theory and Theory of Principal and Agent o support our study.
Design/methodology/approach – Empirical study (including PSM method, IV method, threshold method and so on) is used in this study. Moreover, this paper selects the non-financial listed companies of A share enlisted in both the Shanghai and the Shenzhen Stock Markets from the period of 2007 to 2016 as the sample.
Findings – Our findings show a positive correlation between multiple large shareholders and absinvestment among Chinese listed firms.
Practical & social implications of research – Different from the previous views that multiple large shareholders have positive governance effects, we provide evidence that multiple large shareholders have negative governance effects. And we provide new evidence that controlling shareholders would collude with multiple large shareholders to seek for excess private benefits by enhancing enterprise absinvestment.
Originality/value – This study contributes to the literature in several important ways. First, it shows a positive correlation between multiple large shareholders and absinvestment, which extends the research of Jiang et al. (2018), which found that multiple large shareholders can profoundly enhance investment efficiency. Second, this paper is the first to introduce a threshold model to study the impact of controlling shareholders on the relation between multiple large shareholders and absinvestent, demonstrating that the positive relation between them is strengthened by promoting the governance effect of controlling shareholders.