An Empirical Examination of the Relationship between Ownership Structure and the Performance of Firms in Nigeria

This study examines the relationship between ownership structure and the financial performance of listed firms in the financial sector of the Nigerian economy. To achieve the objective of this study, a total of 31 selected listed firms in the Nigerian stock exchange market were used. Also, the corporate annual reports for the period 2006-2010 were analyzed. This paper basically modeled the corporate ownership structure and firm performance relationship of the selected listed firms using the multivariate multiple regression analysis method to test the research propositions in this study. The study as part of it findings observed that observed that institutional ownership has a significant positive impact on the performance of the selected listed firms in Nigeria. In addition, the study also revealed that that there is a significant positive relationship between foreign ownership and the firm performance in Nigeria.