Capital Structure Determinants: Evidence From Surviving Listed Companies In Malaysia

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Date
2018-08
Authors
Lau, Teik Cheng
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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.
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Management
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