No abstract

This paper examines the mitigation effect of the ultimate ownership identity on the diversification discount under the emerging market's institutional setting. Using a sample of non-financial listed firms in Malaysia from 2002 to 2013, the study reveals that government ultimate ownership is able to mitigate the diversification discount better than family ultimate ownership by 5 to 43 percent, whereas family ultimate ownership is better than foreign ultimate ownership in mitigating the diversification discount by 30 to 118 percent. Our study also finds that a high degree of ownership concentration gives rise to the diversification discount.

This study examines the relation between corporate diversification and stock price crash risk and whether female directors moderate this relation. Using a sample of Malaysian publicly listed firms based on 2010–2016 data, our study finds diversification mitigates crash risk but only for highly diversified firms. Our study also finds that the mitigating effect of diversification is more pronounced for firms with higher proportion of female directors in the board in which it is aligned with the notion of gender diversity in promoting good corporate governance. Our findings are beneficial to stock investors in managing the “tail risk” in stock prices of conglomerates/diversified firms.