The impact of law on the protection of minority shareholders, concentration of ownership and information asymmetry

Saadaoui Amir and Boujelbene Younes

Faculty of Economics and Management, University of Sfax, Tunisia

*Corresponding author Email: am.saadaoui@yahoo.fr

Accepted 27 November, 2012

Abstract

This paper studies the impact of law on the protection of minorities, the concentration of ownership and information asymmetry on the basis of a comparison between civil law countries and common law countries. This comparison is done by comparing the origin of these two types of law and the rights that protect minority shareholders against expropriation of shareholders and executives. Similarly the comparison happens to the concentration of ownership, based on the LLSV studies, and information asymmetry by studying the problems of this asymmetry as well as solutions. This study was made by comparison of 11 countries and 11 civil law common law countries. These results allow us to say that minority shareholders are protected in the common law countries than in civil law countries, and for the concentration of ownership that is most popular in common law countries than in civil law countries. Against by the asymmetry of information the legal system has no effect on this variable.

Keywords: corporate governance, protection of minority, concentration of ownership, information asymmetry.