The Impact Of Ownership Structure On Dividend Policy: Empirical Evidence From China's Listed Companies

Dividend policy is an important financial policy of the listed companies, which is closely related with the share holders' profit. As the listed companies have existed in the forms of non-Circulation stock (non-tradable shares) and Circulation stock (tradable shares), the specialty of which leads to the interests conflicts between these two different types of share holders, therefore there are different preferences in dividend policy, the phenomenon, such as the low level of dividend payment and the middle and small-sized shareholders' interest being violated by the large-sized. In 2005 China Organization of Securities Commissions issued Circular on some listed companies' Dividend policy to announce the implementation of Split-share reform, which will provide the guarantee for the share holders to balance their interests, so it will have a significant impact on the security market, especially on the dividend policy of the listed companies.In view of the above, dividend model in the framework of the differentproperty of shareholder and the different ownership collecting is built takingthe sample of listed companies in Shenzhen and Shanghai stock exchange Split-share reform by the end of 2005 on the basis of customers effect theory and cost theory from the perspective of the property of shareholder and the ownership collecting, in which stepwise regression is applied. It is found that after the implementation of Split-share reform, the rate of state-owned share and legal person share has decreased compared with before, the state-owned share rate is a little high, so the phenomenon of one single share becoming supportive has still existed. State-owned shares and legal person's shares have the very strong cash interest on shares. The ownership collecting is negatively related, and the big share holders will violate the small share holders' interests. The result demonstrates that the present dividend policy only provides the solution from the perspective of the property of shareholder and, the problem of densely-distribute ownership still needs discussion.