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Corporate Ownership, Control, and Firm Performance in Victorian Britain

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 February 2016

Graeme G. Acheson ,
Gareth Campbell ,
John D. Turner  and
Nadia Vanteeva
Graeme G. Acheson
Affiliation:
Graeme G. Acheson is Professor of Finance, University of Stirling, Stirling Management School, Stirling, FK9 4LA, Scotland. E-mail: graeme.acheson@stir.ac.uk.
Gareth Campbell
Affiliation:
Gareth Campbell is Lecturer in Finance, Queen's University Belfast, Queen's Management School, Belfast, BT7 1NN, N.Ireland. E-mail: gareth.campbell@qub.ac.uk.
John D. Turner
Affiliation:
John D. Turner is Professor of Finance and Financial History, Queen's University Belfast, Queen's Management School, Belfast, BT7 1NN, N.Ireland. E-mail: j.turner@qub.ac.uk.
Nadia Vanteeva
Affiliation:
Nadia Vanteeva is a Senior Lecturer in Economics, University of the West of England, Bristol Business School, Bristol, BS16 1QY, England. E-mail: Nadia.Vanteeva@uwe.ac.uk.
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Abstract

Scholars have long debated whether ownership matters for firm performance. The standard view regarding Victorian Britain is that family-controlled companies had a detrimental effect on performance. In this article, we examine this view using a hand-collected corporate ownership dataset. Our main finding is that it was not necessarily the broad structure of corporate ownership that mattered for performance, but whether family blockholders had a governance role. Large active blockholders tended to increase operating performance, implying that they reduced managerial expropriation. Contrastingly, we find that directors who were independent of large owners were more likely to increase shareholder value.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 76 , Issue 1 , March 2016 , pp. 1 - 40
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 2016 

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Footnotes

Thanks to the Leverhulme Trust (Grant no. F/00203/Z) for financial support. Turner also wishes to thank Geoff Jones, Walter Friedman, and Harvard Business School for their hospitality at the outset of this project. Thanks to the archivists at the National Archives at Kew, the National Archives of Scotland, and the Guildhall Library for all their assistance. Thanks to seminar participants at Queen's University Belfast, University College Dublin, the Perth FRESH conference, and the European Business History Association conference for their comments.

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