Dual-Class Ownership Structure: Evidence from Developed and Emerging Financial Markets

This paper construct and analyze a comprehensive list of dual-class firms from 40 different countries and 2 types of markets: emerging and developed. The research is devoted to analyzing managerial agency problems through relationship between ownership structure and company performance, focusing on it’s single- or dual-class status, cash-flow and voting rights. The main result is that for the emerging markets with relatively low shareholder’s protection the negative effect of company duality and differences between cash flow and voting rights on company valuation does exist and is more pronounced than for the developed markets. The analysis carried out on a generalized sample from both markets simultaneously also findings evidence in support of the "entrenchment" hypothesis. One more interesting finding received is that for the emerging market companies with dual ownership structure bonding to higher standards of developed markets through cross-listing results in higher firm performance.