The Impact Of Family Enterprises' Listed Modes On The Cash Dividend Policy

The problems of the dividend policy of the listed companies havebeen the focus of academic circles. Though there are many factors thatinfluence cash dividend paying behavior, making sane cash dividendpolicy is not only propitious to improve the listed companies' quality andother shareholders' profit protection, but also can improve thecommunication between the listed companies and investors. This paperlies on the background of our capital market, aims at the phenomenon ofthe amount of family-controlled listed companies increasing rapidly inthe recent years, analyses and tests the relevance between the familyenterprises' listed modes and their cash dividend paying behavior duringthe period of year 2002-2004, in order to research and explore how thelisted modes influence corporate cash dividend policy, so that investorscan understand the intrinsic causes of benefit distribution offamily-controlled listed companies.Different from other researches, this paper lies on the basis of theagency problems between controlling shareholders and minorityshareholders, classifies family enterprises into direct listed companies and indirect listed companies according to the listed modes, analyses theirbenefit distribution behavior, and tests keeping cash theory or shiftingcash theory.Our empirical results indicate that family enterprises' cash flowrights structure and control rights structure have different characters ifthey choose different listed modes, which result in different cash dividendpaying behavior. Compare direct listed companies and indirect onestogether, direct listed companies have central cash flow rights and controlrights, which are higher than that of indirect ones, so the controllingshareholders of direct listed companies tend to distribute cash dividend orpay higher cash dividend in order to get joint benefits, even someenterprises want to acquire repay by over-ability cash dividend policy.The separation of control and cash flow fights in the indirect listedcompanies is higher than that in the direct ones, so they have incentives toaccept private benefits of control by unfair connected transactions, anddon't want to pay cash dividend or pay lower cash dividend. Direct listedcompanies' cash dividend distribution behavior conforms to shifting cashtheory, and that of indirect ones coincides keeping cash theory. Our resultshows that controlling shareholders can use different cash dividend policyto get their destinations, that is to say, in order to receive benefits as moreas possible.At last, this paper brings up some suggestions on how to protect minority shareholders' benefits, in order to guide our capital marketdevelop healthy. This paper also shows its shortage in the research,propounding on the aspect which should be researched more in the future.