Debt financing structure, ownership concentration and firm performance: a comparison of the listed state-owned and non-state-owned CMNEs

This paper examines the impact of debt financing and ownership concentration on internationalization performance by using a sample of 217 Chinese multinational enterprises (CMNEs) from 2009 to 2016. Through fixed-effect regression and dynamic threshold analysis, this paper finds that increasing short-term debts is positively associated with the internationalization performance of non-state-owned CMNEs, while increasing short-term debts by state-owned CMNEs will harm their performance. Ownership concentration affects CMNEs’ risk preference and thus affecting their internationalization performance in different degrees. This paper finds that the threshold for the impact of CMNEs’ largest shareholder’s ownership concentration on its internationalization performance is 0.18, the thresholds for the impact of CMNEs’ top 10 shareholders’ ownership concentration on its internationalization performance are 0.346 and 0.433. When state-owned CMNEs’ top 10 shareholders’ ownership concentration exceeds 0.337 and 0.347, their internationalization performance will have significant positive changes. Overall, this study is expected to contribute to the literature of internationalization of emerging market companies.