This study examined the impact of ownership structure on the financial performance of selected quoted manufacturing companies in Nigeria. Specifically, the study assessed the effect of managerial, foreign, private, and institutional ownership on financial performance. The research adopted an ex post facto design. A sample size of five leading fast-moving consumer goods manufacturing firms was used. The study sourced secondary data from the annual reports of the selected firms from 2011 to 2023. Panel estimated generalised least square regression analysis was used to test the hypotheses. The findings revealed that managerial ownership has a positive and significant effect on financial performance of selected quoted manufacturing companies in Nigeria (β = 0.303, p = 0.0042), foreign ownership has a negative and significant effect on financial performance of selected quoted manufacturing companies in Nigeria (β = –2.479, p = 0.0042), private ownership has a negative but non-significant effect on financial performance of selected quoted manufacturing companies in Nigeria (β = –0.102, p = 0.4236), and institutional ownership has a positive but non-significant effect on financial performance of selected quoted manufacturing companies in Nigeria (β = 0.051, p = 0.9496). Hence, the effectiveness of ownership is not determined solely by the presence of shareholders but by the quality of their involvement, their investment horizons, and the extent to which their objectives align with the long-term growth of the firms. Boards of directors of the selected manufacturing companies should implement structured managerial shareholding programs that reward managers with equity stakes tied to performance metrics.
Otuonye et al. (Sat,) studied this question.