An Empirical Research on Relationship between Chief Executive Payment and Ownership Structure

This paper focuses on the relationship between the ownership structure and the chief executive payment based on a sample of Chinese public companies. The results show that the chief executive payment is more strongly related to firm size in firms with dispersed ownership than in firms with concentrated ownership, while corporate financial performance has more influence on chief executive payment in firms with concentrated ownership than in firms with dispersed ownership. In addition, it is found that a CEO will be paid more if there is a payment committee in his company and the corporate status can affect the chief executive payment. Our findings also show that firms with concentrated ownership perform better than firms with dispersed ownership and CEOs are motivated with more managerial ownership in the latter than in the former.