| As the investors of the company,minority shareholders have the right to know and make decisions on the company's operations and managements.However,in reality,due to the less capital and the small number of shares,minority shareholders' investment is random,dispersed and temporary,and the input and output of their participation in pecific corporate governance is asymmetric.Therefore,compared with the management and the major shareholders,the minority shareholders are in a weak position of information and lack the ability to protect themselves,so they can only rely on the decisions and operations of the management and the major shareholders,thus facing a double principal-agent dilemma.They may not only suffer losses due to the moral hazard of the management,but also suffer damages due to the entrenchment effect of the major shareholders,and even lose more interests due to the collusion of them.In this regard,China is committed to embedding the protection of the rights and interests of minority shareholders into the construction of the capital market system.On December 27,2013,China Securities Regulatory Commission held a press conference to guide the general meetings of shareholders of listed companies to fully adopt the online voting method,improve the system for the minority shareholders to put forward proposals for the removal of the directors of companies,meanwhile separately count,timely announce the voting results of the minority shareholders and submit them to the regulatory authorities.Under favorable policies and circumstances for the protection of the minority shareholders,their awareness of protecting their own rights and interests has also increased.They are more and more actively attending the shareholder's meetings,obtaining information on operations and developments of their investees,expressing their own wishes and demands,making decisions on matters related to their own interests,and rising "Activism" of minority shareholders successfully.So,how will their actions affect the company?Does it really play a supervisory role to the management and the major shareholders,so as to reduce the agency cost and improve the performance of the company?To implement the innovation development idea,to speed up the innovation achievements into realistic productivity,GEM of China has been set up since 2009,aiming to provide financing channels for start-up,growth and high-tech companies.Meanwhile,it also creates opportunities for investors to expand investment objects and optimize their investment portfolios.Accordingly it attracts strong attention in the capital market.However,compared with the main board market,the GEM has more relaxed requirements in terms of establishment time,capital scale and interim and long-term performance.At the same time,it has a small scale,unstable operation and difficult supervision.Therefore,it is a low-threshold and high-risk stock market.Based on the wealth effect of high valuation and high returns in the GEM,as well as the optimistic expectation of high-tech and high-growth companies,the listed companies in the GEM are warmly welcomed by small and medium-sized investors,which has witnessed strong fluctuations and high risks in the GEM.Since minority shareholders in the GEM face greater investment risks and the possibility of infringement of their rights and interests,they need to actively participate in corporate decision-making and governance,so as to make rational and prudent decisions and protect their legitimate rights and interests as far as possible.For all those reasons,this paper takes the GEM listed companies with stronger investment willingness and greater investment risk as an example,takes the minority shareholders as the research object,collects the data of their voting in the annual general meeting from 2014 to 2017,constructs an empirical model,firstly examines the affect of minority shareholders' voting participation on corporate performance,then explores the path of minority shareholders' voting participation on corporate performance,and finally puts corporate characteristics(equity nature and information environment)into the research framework to examine the relationship between the two elements under different corporate characteristics.It is found that in the GEM,voting by minority shareholders can significantly boost corporate performance.The first type of agency cost and the second type of agency cost constitute an important intermediary channel for the voting participation of minority shareholders to affect the company performance.The voting participation of minority shareholders boosts the company performance by reducing the first type of agency cost and the second type of agency cost.In terms of corporate ownership,the effect of minority shareholders' voting on the performance of non-state-owned enterprises is significant,but the effect on the performance of state-owned enterprises is not significant.From the perspective of information environment,the effect of minority shareholders' voting on the performance is significant in companies with high information transparency,but not significant in companies with low information transparency.These results make clear that in the GEM,the inclusion of minority shareholders in corporate governance has a significant effect,which can truly play their supervisory role over the management and major shareholders,thus alleviate two kinds of agency cost and ultimately boost the level of corporate performance. |
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