An Empirical Study On How Ownership Structure Affects Cash Dividend Policy Of Listed Companies

From the corporate governance perspective, this article selects listed companies in China's stock market that distribute only cash dividends between 2002 and 2004. First, we divide all the samples into 7 sections under different ownership structure characteristics Mann-Whitney U test is a very effective method to compare parameters of two independent samples. With this approach ,we test the cash dividends paid of the sample groups ,and on this basis, we develop multivariate linear regression model based on the assumption we make., then using cross-section data of 3 years, test the impact of ownership structure on cash dividend policy of listed companies. Results of the study revealed that ownership ratio of the largest shareholder and the Herfidahl index of three former shareholders are significantly related to cash dividend level, the impact of public ownership ratio on cash dividend is significantly negative .The second and the third largest shareholder's ownership ratio are negative to cash dividend, but the proportion of state shares no significant impact on the level of cash dividends paid. The findings revealed the equity structure shares important impact on the cash dividend policy of listed companies in China's stock market.