Shareholder Activism in the Family-Controlled Firms in Malaysia

This chapter investigates the short-run and long-run economic implications of the shareholder activism in family-controlled firms in Malaysia.

In order to investigate the impact of MSWG activism on RPT, we collected related party transactions data (sales and purchases) and inter-segment sales from the annual reports of the firms. We use standard event study methodology to calculate abnormal returns for the sample and control firms.

We do not find significant effect on the share performance in the short-run after MSWG engagement with the targeted firms. However in the long-run, our results show significant improvement in the MSWG targeted family-controlled firms’ performance compared to non-targeted family firms. We also examine the changes in the level of related party transactions. We do not find significant changes in the level of such sales and purchase transactions except for inter-segment sales.

We argue that market is not strong form efficient because market did not react to the MSWG engagement with the management of these companies. We propose that future research should focus on the investors perception of the MSWG involvement so that a clear picture of its significance can be observable to other firms in the market.

Even though the activism practices are still less aggressive in Malaysia than those found in the developed countries such as the United Kingdom and the United States, however our results show that shareholder activism led by MSWG have impact on the family-owned firms performance in the long-run.

We argue that it is the first study to examine MSWG engagements with the family-controlled firms in Malaysia.