股权结构与公司业绩外文中英文翻译.doc

外文翻译 Ownership Structure and Firm Performance: Evidence from IsraelMaterial Source: Journal of Management and Governance Author: Beni Lauterbach and Alexander Vaninsky 1.Introduction For many years and in many economies, most of the business activity was conducted by proprietorships, partnerships or closed corporations. In these forms of business organization, a small and closely related group of individuals belonging to the same family or cooperating in business for lengthy periods runs the firm and shares its profits. However, over the recent century, a new form of business organization flourished as non-concentrated-ownership corporations emerged. The modern diverse ownership corporation has broken the link between the ownership and active management of the firm. Modern corporations are run by professional managers who typically own only a very small fraction of the shares. In addition, ownership is disperse, that is the corporation is owned by and its profits are distributed among many stockholders. The advantages of the modern corporation are numerous. It relieves financing problems, which enables the firm to assume larger-scale operations and utilize economies of scale. It also facilitates complex-operations allowing the most skilled or expert managers to control business even when they the professional mangers do not have enough funds to own the firm. Modern corporations raise money sell common stocks in the capital markets and assign it to the productive activities of professional managers. This is why it is plausible to hypothesize that the modern diverse-ownership corporations perform better than the traditional “closely held” business forms. Moderating factors exist. For example, closely held firms may issue minority shares to raise capital and expand operations. More importantly, modern corporations face a severe new problem called the agency problem: there is a chance that the professional mangers governing the daily operations of the fi