Change in corporate governance and tunnelling behaviour of controlling shareholders: The case of Chinese listed companies after the share reform

Based on a review of the background of non-tradable share reform and on the relevant documents on the tunnelling behaviour of majority shareholders and corporate governance, this thesis first undertakes a comparative analysis of governance mechanisms that restrain the tunnelling activities of Chinese listed companies before and after the share reform. Second, by using related transactions as the proxy variables of tunnelling, we could judge the changes in tunnelling activities before and after the share reform through the analysis of the relationships among absolute scale, relative scale and structural changes in related transactions and the share reform. Third, an empirical test was conducted to determine whether the tunnelling behaviour of related transactions decreased after the share reform. Results showed that the tunnelling effect of related transactions weakened after the share reform. The tunnelling effect of related transactions with controllable shareholders was not different from that of other related transactions as a whole. Finally, from the empirical research on the joint effect of share reform and corporate governance on tunnelling behaviour, we found that ownership counterbalance, institutional shareholding and independent directors did not have an effective function in restricting related transactions after the share reform. The share reform had a significantly adverse effect on related transactions by forming either total assets or total debt. This thesis appreciates the positive results of the share reform. As for tunnelling behaviour, more system defects may have to be eliminated, so we propose several countermeasures.