The moderating effect of invested firms characteristics on the relationship between institutional blockholders ownership and executive compensation

Abstract

Using dataset of KOSPI 200 firm list from TS2000 in Korea, from 2013 to 2017 period, this study examines the association between executive compensation and institutional blockholders with the targeted firms capital structure.

As previous studies under the agency theory have suggested, this study predicts that higher ownership of institutional blockholders would reduce the growth rate of executive compensation and increase incentive pay as main effect relationship. Following previous research trend, this study categorized the type of institutional investors with 3 groups, but it also focused on the targeted firms capital traits as 3 moderating factors: Internal fund rate, Managerial ownership, and Chaebol.

As the research expected, the result showed that institutional blockholders and the moderators influence on their investee firms, but their impact can be found only about executive incentive pay rate. Inner fund rate does not meaningful both of dependent variable, and Chaebol firms report opposite effect with the studys expectation. All the variables tested in this research are not related with executive pay growth rate. This complex result imply that Institutional investors can be influenced by its own types and some conditions of target firms context at least about incentive pay issue.

By examining moderating effect of capital structure, this study tries to contribute agency theory perspective about executive compensation issue in Korean context.