Equity Ownership Structure and Operating Performance of Commercial Banks in An Emerging Market: Evidence From The Nigerian Banking Industry

📄 Project Abstract

This study investigates the influence of equity ownership structure on the operating performance of quoted Nigerian banks from 1998 to 2007. A dataset on bank equity ownership structure and bank profitability, covering one hundred and eighty observations from eighteen out of the presently quoted twenty one banks was used for the study. A non probability sampling method was applied to select the banks used in the study. Overall, the study provided strong empirical validation of the link between equity ownership structure and bank's operating performance. Using pooled cross sectional regression techniques for the entire sample for the ten-year period with ROA, ROE, and NIM/TA, as alternate measures of performance, the signs of the regression coefficients and their significance levels are almost consistent across the different measures of profit. The results challenge many of the widely held opinion concerning the impact of equity ownership structure on bank profitability. First, there is...