Family Ownership, Corporate Governance and Performance: Evidence from Saudi Arabia

The main objective of this study is to examine the performance of companies listed in the Saudi Stock Exchange. For this purpose, we studied and tested a sample of 792 firm-years among from 11 industrial groups for the years 2006 to 2013 and compared Family and Non-family firms. The research addresses the questions 1) Do family owned firms perform better? 2) How does concentration of ownership affect firm performance, comparing family firms to non-family ones? This research attempts to fill a research gap on the relationship or determinants of capital structure in one of the emerging markets, Saudi Arabia. This study will be implemented through a quantitative approach. Secondary data were obtained from published annual statistical data, from the company financial reports and the DataStream database.