Blockholders e a criação de valor das empresas brasileiras de capital aberto

Abstract

Recent theoretical and empirical studies have suggested that blockholders, who hold the shares of 5% or more in companies, exercise their power as a mechanism of corporate governance. The governance power of blockholders can be exercised through two intervention mechanisms, one is "voice", which refers to the willingness of shareholders to incur costly activities to increase the value of the company, and another is the threat of exit, which refers to the threat of the sale of company shares in the market. Newly academic research have been carried out in this area, relating the presence of blockholders with managerial efficiency, especially in the American context. These studies provide consistent evidences that the action of blockhloders in companies can affect managerial behavior. However, few studies directly aproach the relationship between blockholders and companies' value. In addition, studies that assess whether the presence of blockholders actually discipline management are scarce in emerging countries. In general, the blockholders are shareholders with relevant participation in the ownership structure, as a result of this fact, in thesis, they have strong incentives to monitor, to collect private information and to intervene together with controllers or management, reducing agency costs and, consequently, increasing the companies value. In this sense, the hypotheses of this thesis argue that the presences of blockholders in the ownership structure of Brazilian companies are positively related to the creation of value, and that the strength of these relationship depends on the variables equity interest of blockholder, the number of blockholders, the managers' sensitivity to share price, liquidity of company shares, the types of blockholders, the diversity of the types of blockholders, the level of activism, and the interrelations among the blockholders in the companies. To resolve the hypotheses of this thesis, the sample was made up of Brazilian non-financial companies, whose data are available in Economática®, totaling 334 companies, with 1,899 observations. The data refer to the period from 2010 to 2016. Methodologically, to answer the purposes of this thesis, six hypotheses were formulated, and for each hypothesis, two ordinary least squares regressions were configured, with panel data, according to the metrics of value creation considered in this research, Q of Tobin (Q) and return (R). For the models where the Q was used, panel data with fixed effects were applied, and in the models where the R was used, panel data with pooled were applied, according to the orientation of the preliminary econometric tests. The general results of this thesis indicate that the mere presence of blockholders in Brazilian companies does not produce the kind of results which were found in the theoretical and empirical literature, which provided the basis for this thesis. On the contrary, the results indicate a negative relation between the presence of blockholders and the value of Brazilian companies for both metrics of value of this research. The different results in relation to those presented by the theoretical and empirical models found in USA are explained by the peculiar characteristics of the Brazilian market, especially with respect to the differences in ownership structure. In a market like the US, a blockholder with a 5% stake in the company is a large shareholder, is a threat to controllers and managements, since control there is exercised, for the most part, with less then 50% of the total capital. In Brazil most of the time companies have a defined shareholder control, so the blockholders does not have the same strengh. Thus, as seen in this research, Brazilian blockholders, in the majority, are passive. This passivity causes company controllers and managers to use blockholders to dilute equity capital and cash flow rights of the company, which increases expropriation incentives by controllers and managers, raising agency costs and reducing the value of companies. In the same way, it can be observed that the metrics related to the strength of the blockholders as mechanisms of governance do not have a positive effect on the relationship of the blockholders with the creation of value of the companies. On the contrary, the metrics related to the shareholding and the number of blockholders are related negatively to the creation of value in the companies, reinforcing the theoretical argument that the dilution of stock capital and the cash flow of the controller increases the incentives of controller’s expropriation. The different types of blockholders or the heterogeneity of these, in most cases, were not related to the creation of value in companies. In relation to the diversity of the blockholders present in the corporate ownership structure, it is concluded that this affects negatively the value of the companies, that means, the more types of different blockholders present in the ownership structure of the companies, the worse the results in relation to the metrics for creating value. However , when the presence of active blockholders and their interrlationsships is in identified in brazilian companies, it can be seen that, in this situation, blockholders potentiate the creation effect and value in the company, converging with the theoretical premises presented by American studies that supported this thesis. This approximation of the results can be attributed to the profile of the Brazilian active investors that really act as mechanisms of governance, which happens in most cases with the blockholders in the American market. The results of this thesis allow the advanced of the national and international literature about theme, demonstrating that under a concentrated property structure, especially with the presence of the figure of a "owner" and / or majority shareholder in companies, as in the case of Brazil, , in general, the monitoring of management becomes more difficult. In the Brazilian environment, the majority of blockholders cannot use their voice power, due to the high concentration of ownership and the difficulties of exercising effective influence with the controller or the management. In the same way, there is also a difficulty with the exit mechanism, since most listed companies do not provide sufficient liquidity in the roles for the threat of exit power to make sense.