Research On The Minority Investor Protection Of China's Listed Companies

Equity investors are the most important interest body and the most important stockholder in modern shareholding companies. Due to their inferior position in shareholding companies, the minority investors are expropriated by the managers when the shares are dispersedly owned and are expropriated by both the managers and the controlling shareholders when the shares are closely owned by the controlling shareholder. In China's listed companies, the "dominative position of state equity ownership" and the non-negotiability of the state-owned shares are the special cause of the expropriations, and the "insider control" features "actual insider control".The controlling shareholder and the "insiders" have many means to expropriate . the minority investors: distorted dividend payment, unfair related transactions, investments for the maximization of self-interests, excessive on-the-position consumptions, abnormal information disclosure, manipulation of the market, and restructuring "magic" are the usual means.Researches have shown that better investor protection means higher market value of the shares, more listed companies, more company sales and assets, higher corporate valuation, more dispersed equity holding and corporate control, less private benefits from control, and higher relatedness between the investment opportunity and the actual investment. In short, better investor protection benefits the optimization of the corporate ownership structure, the development of capitalmarket, and the growth of actual economy.Minority investor protection is different from countries to countries due to their different legal origin and law enforcement. Comparisons show that common law countries usually provide better protections for minority investors than the civil law countries do. Compared with the developed market economies, China's legal rules are also complete, but because of the poor law enforcement and the inferior corporate governance, the minority investor protection is still weak."Contractual Theory" and "Legal Theory" are the major theories relating to the protection of minority investors. The Contractual Theory basically argues that, if the contract is complete and the judicial system for the contract performance is effective, the investors can be better protected by the contract between the investor and the company, therefore, legal rules are not so important. On the contrary, the Legal Theory holds that legal rules are vital to minority investor protection, and thus legal rules are the most fundamental cause leading to the difference in investor protection.Findings of this dissertation show that China's legal rules relating to the minority investor protection is comparably perfect, but there are still many aspects that need improvements. The major defects of China's legal rules relating to minority investor protection include the poor enforcement of the principle of equity equality, the ineffective law enforcement, and the imperfection of the investor suit mechanism. At present, the key to perfect China's laws of minority investor protection is to create a minority investor protection-friendly legal environment.In the securities market, it is imperative to exert effective regulations to protect the rights and interests of the minority investors. However, over-regulation may also damage the minority investors. As far as the securities regulation in China is concerned, lacking of oneness, independence, and skill of regulation constitutes the major problems. And there is a tendency of stressing government regulation while ignoring industrial self-disciplining. To improve the securities regulations in China, it is quite necessary to rebuild the "soul" of regulation—the philosophy of regulation.Sound corporate governance is equally important to minority investorprotection. Empirical studies have shown that, in the same country (the supply of legal rules is identical), a company may offer better protections to the minority investors by designing a better internal governance structure.Equity ownership structure is the major aspect of corporate governance, and different equity ownership structures have different effect on minority investor protection. This dissertation holds that, in China, the dominative position of state ownership, Equity Segmentation, absence of agents are the root causes of the expropriations in the listed companies. Therefore, cultivating diversified investing bodies, reducing the proportion of state equities, increasing the proportion of the outstanding stocks, and forming an equity-interaction structure, and finally eliminating the equity segmentation are the overall way of thinking in readjusting the equity ownership structure. As to the general shareholder meeting system, accumulative voting, sorted-voting, and voting by correspondence are of special significance to minority investor protection. The effectiveness of the board of directors has direct connection on the performance of a company and the interest of its shareholders. To restrain the "hollowness" of the board of directors in China's listed companies and protect the interest of the minority investors, the companies should improve the internal control system; the government administration organs should reinforce the check system of the qualifications of the director candidates, perfect the rule of procedure of shareholders' meeting, constantly perfect the faithfulness filing system, and enhancing the awareness of faithfulness of directors, enhancing the independent director system.In the securities market, the behavior of such participates as intermediaries have direct influence on minority investor protection. This dissertation argues that the key to give play to the intermediaries is the faithfulness construction, while the major motivating and constraining mechanism is the reputation mechanism. In the securities market, financial media helps the equality of the market information, and at the same time helps to reduce asymmetry of information between the government and the investors and between the investors and the listed companies by disclosing the "ugly behaviors" of the public power organs and the listed companies, thusprotecting the minority investors.The objectiveness and particularity of the equity investment risks, the incompleteness of law, the principle of reciprocity! and the interaction between self-protection and corporate governance improvement determine that investor self-protection is the indispensable part of investor protection. In practice, the individual investors are not so high in quality, they present much psychology of speculation, and they lack enough awareness of saving their own rights and interests, so it is quite urgent for them to enhance the awareness and ability of self-protection. However, sound self-protection calls for a series of institutional arrangements and active and intelligent investors as well.A shareholding company involves many interest bodies, and thus how to coordinate the interest of different bodies is of an important issue. The rights and interests of the minority investors are subject to damages and expropriations due to the state interest-oriented institutional arrangement of China's securities market, the result is that the investors are easy to lose confidence to the market and it is difficult to ensure the state interests as well; therefore, it is necessary to execute further corrections on the state-oriented institutional arrangement. For the sake of minority investor protection, it is necessary to enlarge the institutional investors. However, due to their inferior position in the market, the individual investors are often the object of the expropriations by the institutional investors; therefore, while enlarging-the institutional investors, it is necessary to restrain their expropriations. As far as the relationship between the interest of shareholders and that of the stakeholders is concerned, this dissertation suggests the conception of "shareholder's interest preferred", which is different from the traditional logic of "shareholder centered" and is also different from the view of "stakeholder ownership". The core view of "shareholder's interest preferred" is: in most cases, there exists a high consistency between the interest of shareholders and that of the stakeholders, and stressing shareholder's interest is, as a matter of fact, stressing the interest of stakeholders. This dissertation emphasizes that, in China, it is the undue stressing of the stakeholders' interest while ignoring the shareholders' interest that has caused thedamage of both the shareholders' interest and the stakeholders' interest.