Capital Structure Determinants: Evidence From Surviving Listed Companies In Malaysia
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Date
2018-08
Authors
Lau, Teik Cheng
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Universiti Sains Malaysia
Abstract
This study examined the relationship between the determinants of capital
structure and financial leverage of the surviving listed family and surviving non-family
ownership of public listed companies in Malaysia. There are 474 publicly listed
companies in the the Bursa Malaysia as at 31 December 1999, a longitudinal period of
study was examined from year 2000 to 2015, total 16 years. After deducted finance
related companies, those fall in PN4, PN17, delisted, non-survived and incomplete
data, final samples are 151 surviving listed companies, consist of 72 surviving family
and 79 surviving non-family listed companies. The econometric techniques, Pearson
correlation matrix, panel data analysis (fixed effects model) and independent samples
t-test have been applied. Financial accounting data as secondary data were derived
from Datastream and annual report. This study applied four independent variables,
namely asset tangibility (TANG), growth opportunities (GROWTH), profitability
(PROF) and liquidity (LIQ), and one control variable firm size (SIZE). The short term
debt ratio (STDR), long term debt ratio (LTDR) and debt ratio (DR) are dependent
variables. The average mean value of leverages for the surviving family firms are
slightly lower than surviving non-family firms, indicating that surviving family firms
use lower debt as comparison. Based on the mean value statistic, it reported that
surviving non-family companies perform slightly better than surviving family
companies in term of asset tangibility, growth opportunities and profitability.
However, surviving family companies’ liquidity and firm size are slightly larger than
non-family companies. Regardless of that, the empirical result shows, there are no significant difference on leverages between the surviving family and non family firms.
Nonetheless, the study has proved that surviving non-family firms performed slightly
better than surviving family firms with a significant differences in term of growth
opportunities and profitability. Overall, all determinants are significant to the debt ratio
for surviving family and non-family companies, except growth opportunities for
surviving non-family companies. In a nutshell, surviving family and non-family
companies prefer to use internal sources as main priority for financial leverage
decisions to sustain its business, supported pecking order theory. Furthermore, the
results revealed that surviving companies have sufficient liquid assets, can utilize these
funds to finance business activities and have lower leverage. Hence, surviving listed
companies in Malaysia tend to manage its leverage wisely for the survival and
longevity of business operation in long run.
Description
Keywords
Management