UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HO CID MINH CITY VIETNAM INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL STUDIES THE HAGUE THE NETHERLANDS VIETNAM NETHERLANDS PROGRAMME FOR M A IN DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS FOREIGN OWNERSHIP AND FIRM LEVEL C[.]
INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL STUDIES THE HAGUE THE NETHERLANDS UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HO CID MINH CITY VIETNAM VIETNAM- NETHERLANDS PROGRAMME FOR M.A IN DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS FOREIGN OWNERSHIP AND FIRM-LEVEL CHARACTERISTICS IN THE VIETNAMESE STOCK MARKET Case study: Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange (HOSE) A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS IN DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS By NGUYEN THI KIM CUC Academic Supervisor: Dr PHAM HOANG VAN Dr NGUYEN TRONG HOAI HOCHI MINH CITY, NOVEMBER 2011 Acknowledgments First of all, I want to express my thanks to the Vietnam Netherlands Program for create opportunities and help me to pursue and complete an academic course of the Master of Art in Development Economic I would like to send my sincere thank to Dr Nguyen Trong Hoai who has devote all of his efforts to develop this program and help many students have more knowledge on development economic- a new economic major in Vietnam Next, I also want to say thanks to my supervisor professor Dr Pham Hoang Van for his enthusiasm, his helpful comments and suggestions during my thesis In the process of collecting data, I also received helps from the Market Information department, Hochiminh Stock Exchange Finally, I would like to send my sincere thanks to all of you Wish the Program more and more develop HCMC, NOVEMBER 2011 NGUYEN THI KIM CUC TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract CHAPTER 1.1 Introduction 1.2 Research objectives 1.3 Research questions 1.4 Structure of the thesis CHAPTER 2.1 Background 2.2 Achievements 2.3 Foreign investors in the Vietnamese stock market 2.4 Chapter remark 12 CHAPTER 13 2.1 Key concepts 13 2.2 Theoreticalliterature 14 2.2.1 Financial development and economic growth 14 2.2.2 Stock market and economic growth 14 2.2.3 Foreign ownership and firm-level characteristics 15 2.3 Empirical literature 18 2.4 Chapter remark 21 CHAPTER 22 4.1 Research methodology 22 4.2 Data description 24 4.3 Steps to analyzing data 27 CHAPTER S t················································································································29 5.1 Estimation results 29 5.2 Correlation in pattern growth between VN Index and some other indices 36 CHAPTER 40 6, I Conclusion 40 6.2 Policy recommendations 42 6.3 Limitations and suggested studies .43 6.3.1 Limitations 43 6.3.2 Suggested studies 43 References 45 Appendix Tables 49 Abstract This paper investigates foreign ownership and firm-level characteristics of firms listed on the Hochiminh Stock Exchange - the formal and biggest stock exchange in Vietnam Applying fixed-effects and random-effects models to quarterly data from 2006-2010 for 30 companies, the findings show that foreign investors often invest into large firms - firms with high market capitalization and in firms with high leverage firms with high debt over equity ratio Furthermore, the results also show that returns on equity have significance on foreign ownership ratio of foreign investors at listed firms The results show no effect of Earnings per Share (EPS) and Price to Earnings ratio (PIE) on foreign ownership The paper also checks the pattern growth between VN Index with Shanghai, and Dow Jones indices and answers why foreign investors invest in the Vietnamese stock market Keywords: foreign ownership, firm-level characteristics, Hochiminh Stock Exchange, VN Index, ShangHai Index, Dow Jones Index CHAPTER Introduction 1.1 Introduction Vietnam's equity market has benefited from the country's high economic growth of around 7% of gross domestic product (GDP) per year over the past decade, especially in 2007 at 8.5% as well as rapid equitization of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) Passing more than 10 years of dev~lopment, Vietnamese stock market has developed quickly and attracted more and more foreign capital, adding a large capital source for listed companies to produce and helping the stock market to develop strongly Before 2005, the role of foreign investors in the Vietnamese stock market was very blurred This can be explained by new establishment, not yet strong growth of the market to attract both domestic and foreign investors However, 2006 is an important transitional year of foreign investors to the stock market Foreign ownership in 2006 increased three-fold, from 6% to 17%, and up to end of 2007 this number is 30% And from 2007, the foreign ownership is always at high level The Vietnamese stock market is an emerging market that attracts more and more foreign investors who play a very important role in development of the market as well as the economy Over the past 10 years of working of Vietnamese stock market, foreign investors play an important role not only in Vietnamese capital markets but also Vietnamese economic growth In fact, foreign investors help listed companies gain more capital to produce as well as to innovate their technologies Foreign investors also help listed companies to enhance their reliability Moreover, foreign investors bring experiences in management and investment even corporate governance into Vietnam Douma, Pallathiatta and Kabir (2006) investigated the impact of foreign institutional investment on the performance of emerging market firms and found that there is positive effect of foreign ownership on firm performance So, finding indicators affecting foreign investors' holding decisions is important to attracting even greater levels of foreign investment in the future According to the article International Investing on the website of the U.S Securities and Exchange Commission, there are two main reasons why people invest internationally The first is a diversification strategy or to spread investment risk among foreign companies and markets that are different from the United States economy; and second is growth strategy, exploiting the potential for growth in some foreign economies, particularly in emerging markets Obviously, foreign investors invest into another country in order to diversify their investment portfolios Moreover they pay more attention to emerging markets which usually have faster and higher growth However they first consider whether Government's monetary policies affecting interest rate, exchange rate, inflation rate and the political environment are stable or not to ensure that they will not meet potential risks when withdrawing their profits Foreign investors also consider characteristics of listed companies will help them to choose which kinds of stocks or which kinds of portfolios to invest in These characteristics include ownership structure, financial structure, stock structure, and stock performance Investors indeed hold fewer shares in firms with ownership structures that are more conducive to expropriation by controlling insiders Finally, some foreign investors have ethical, moral, strategic, national, or cultural criteria that lead them to invest in certain countries and companies, and to avoid others Determining which of these criteria are the most significant for listed firms at Hochiminh stock exchange will provide valuable information aiming at attracting more capital for the Vietnamese equity 1.2 Research objectives Knowing the role of foreign investors for Vietnamese stock market and economy, the objectives of this research are: - To identify, rank, and test the significance of which main listed firms' financial indicators affect to foreign investors' holding decisions with respect to the Hochiminh stock exchange; - Examine the pattern growth between VN Index and some indices such as ShangHai Index and Dow Jones Index to understand why foreign investors invest into Vietnam stock market if there is correlation - To generate practical recommendations for listed firms to attract more foreign investors into Vietnamese stock market The research limits its research scope to the Hochiminh Stock Exchange which is the largest stock exchange in Vietnam 1.3 Research questions To attain above objectives, the study will answer following questions: Is there any relationship between foreign investors' holding at listed firms with their financial indictors? Do foreign investors invest into the firm's value or just speculate? Is there a correlation in pattern growth between VN Index and other indices? Answering the above questions permits listed firms to have suitable policies in their business process to attract even more foreign investors, contributing for development of the Vietnamese equity 1.4 Structure of the thesis The paper is organized as follows Chapter presents an overview of development of the Vietnam stock market, Hochiminh stock exchange and foreign investors in the market A brief literature review is provided in Chapter Chapter describes the panel data model used to estimate the hypothesis, the research methodologies and a description of the data set Research results are given in Chapter Conclusions and policy implications complete the thesis CHAPTER2 VIETNAMESE STOCK MARKET DEVELOPMENT (Case study: Hochiminh Stock Exchange) The process of industrialization and modernization of Vietnam requires a large source of capital both local and foreign Hence, establishing a stock market in Vietnam to mobilize capital for companies to operate and develop is essential Knowing this, in 1998, the Prime Minister decided to establish Hanoi and Hochiminh City Securities Trading Centers Passing more than 10 years of establishment and development, the Vietnamese stock market has developed quickly In this process, equitization of stateowned enterprises (SOEs) has been important to create a more open and healthier economy 2.1 Background The establishment of the Vietnam Securities Market is marked by official operation of Hochiminh City Securities Trading Center (HoSTC) on July 20th, 2000 and its first trading session on July 28th, 2000 In 2007, HoSTC was transferred into Hochiminh Stock Exchange (HOSE) HOSE is regulated by Securities Law, Business Law, the Charter of HOSE and other relevant regulations The event was a milestone in HOSE development and helped it to have an appropriate position in the regional and international Stock Exchanges Development of HOSE is accompanied by the ups and downs of the economy; its quick development has benefited from high growth rate of GDP of around 7% per year Moreover, there are many specific events that made the stock market develop quickly including joining the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the official visit to Vietnam of the American President George W Bush in late 2006 In 2007 we saw a sharp increase in the number of listed companies and blooming of the market, and the Securities Law is issued and came into effect the same year However, being affected by global financial crisis from 2008 until now, the stock market faces many difficulties with the sharp fall in prices of many stocks The macro economy is faced with a tight budget, trade deficits, and high inflation 2008 was the year with the highest inflation in the last 20 years and up to 23%, decreasing economy growth All of these factors created strong impacts to the Vietnam stock market 2.2 Achievements Through 10 years of establishment and growth, the Vietnam Securities market experienced lots of ups and downs However, the most important in the period of conformation, establishment and development, the stock market always receives deep interests of the Party and Government and thorough instructions from the Ministry of Finance (MoF) and the State Securities Commission (SSC) Although it is young, with the role of "thermometer" of the economy, the Vietnam Securities Market, expressed by VN Index has gained significant development However it also shows strong fluctuations From 307.5 in late 2005, VN Index increased to 809.86 in the sessions on Dec 20th, 2006 The closing of2006 was 753.81, up by 446.31 equivalents to 145.14% of increase compared to the end of 2005 In the first few months of 2007, VN Index rapidly increased and reached 1170.67 records in sessions on Mar 12th, 2007 The Vietnam Index then fluctuated and got under 250 in the first sessions of Mar, 2009 and presently stays around over 500 This is also a specific feature of emerging markets, including Vietnam market It's very volatile (Source: Summarize from Hochiminh Stock Exchange) Landmarks Covirg et al (2007) confirmed that domestic fund managers usually have more information on domestic stocks than foreign fund managers Stocks which have large size of foreign sales or foreign listing are more preferred by foreign funds Foreign funds also like to invest in stocks which have index memberships Using dataset of Japanese and Korean stock markets, Ko et al (2007) have interesting conclusion on preference of the foreign and institutional investors on firm attributes On both these stock markets, stocks which have large capitalization and low book-tomarket are more preferred by foreign investors than institutional investors Moreover, foreign investors tend to hold more shares at firms with high return on equity, especially in Korea Ferreira and Matos (2008) find that foreign institutions in 27 countries tend to prefer firms with good governance and those cross-listed in the U.S 2.3 Empirical literature Chiang, Yi-Chein, Chih-Chen (2006) studied the relationship between the foreign ownership and firm-characteristics by using the multivariate analyses on three-year average data and pooled cross section/time series data during the period 2001-2003 in the Taiwan stock market The results show that foreign investors invest more in firm with large size, high ROE, low leverage ratio They also prefer firms which issue foreign securities Lin, C H., and Shiu, C.Y (2003) also studied determinants affecting to foreign ownership using dataset for the period 1996-2000 in the Taiwan equities The findings are that foreign investors like to invest in large firms Simultaneously, they tend to choose to stocks with low book-to-market Furthermore, firms with high export ratios are strongly preferred by foreign investors 18 Prasanna, P K., (2008) analyzed panel data for twenty-five companies included in the Sensex index of the Bombay Stock Exchange (India) and twenty quarters during five years from 2001 to 2006 to understand the time series, cross sectional and random effects of foreign institutional investment and firm specific characteristics, including ownership structure, financial and stock performance The results show that foreign investors prefer companies which have high volume of publicly held shares and holdings of foreign investors and promoters at a firm are inversely related Furthermore, in this study the share returns and Earning per share have more influence than other variables on foreign investor's investment decision Recently, Vo Xuan Vinh (2010) in his research on foreign ownership in Vietnam stock market investigated the characteristics of listed firms in Hochiminh Stock Exchange that are attractive to foreign ownership By using the multivariate linear regression analysis for the dataset from 2007 to 2009, the findings are that foreign investors prefer large firms, and firms with high book-to-market ratio and low leverage Besides this paper also examined the relationship between foreign ownership and ownership structure, the result found that foreign investors also avoid firms with dominant shareholders and prefer to invest in firms where they can have influence In addition, foreign investors favor pharmacy firms Simultaneously, foreign investors also have a long-term horizon in their investment and follow the buy-and-hold strategy This thesis adds to this literature on the determinants for foreign ownership in equity markets Five firm specific variables have been taken and data collected on a quarterly basis from 2006 quarter to 2010 quarter These variables include market capitalization, return on equity, earnings per share, price-to-earning ratio, and debt/equity ratio or leverage ratio 19 Figure 3.1 Conceptual Framework Vietnamese Stock Market Emerging Market Asymmetric Information Low Corporate Governance Firm-level characteristics: Firm Size (SIZE) Return-on-equity (ROE) Earning Per Shares (EPS) Price Earnings ratio (PE) Leverage ratio (LEV) l +1 • Foreign Ownership % Owning ratio ~ ~ No of holding shares I Pattern growth of VN Index l I i "I I 20 VN Index/SSE, DOW I 2.4 Chapter remark In summary, the relationship between foreign ownership and firm-level characteristics will be examined by using either economic theories or techniques throughout the thesis Figure 3.1 is the framework which initially presents the characteristics of Vietnamese stock market and overview of all inclusive variables as well as the relationship in pattern growth between VN Index - representative for Vietnamese stock market and Shanghai Index - another emerging market but much larger and having longer history and Dow Jones Index - large and long developed market Foreign ownership could be measured by percent of shares or the number of shares that foreigners hold at listed firms In this thesis, percent of shares hold by foreigners at listed firms is used to analyze Moreover, the correlation in pattern growth between VN Index and Shanghai and Dow Jones Index is also examined to check the relationship between the Vietnamese stock market and other markets and partially answer why foreign investors decide to invest into Vietnamese market 21 CHAPTER4 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY AND DATA COLLECTION This chapter describes the methodology to analyze the panel dataset Fixed-effects and random-effects model are used to address the panel ·data Besides, this section also shows data description of sources, variables and expected sign for variables Finally the progression of the analysis is described 4.1 Research methodology The paper studies 30 non-financial listed companies on Hochiminh Stock Exchange (HOSE) The data will be collected from the second quarter of 2006 to the second quarter of2010 quarterly, totalling 17 quarters, for 510 observations As a preliminary analysis, a simple or pooled Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression is used to find those variables that are correlated to foreign ownership of companies With panel data as above, the paper also focus on two techniques use to analyze panel data, fixed effects and random effects We will also estimate a random effects model, which is appropriate if the unobserved variables are not correlated with the independent variables Fixed-effects model: The panel data allows us to control for unobserved company specific characteristics as well as unobserved shocks that affect all firms equally over time A fixed-effects model is appropriate if these unobserved variables are correlated with the independent variables in our model The research will consider fixed-effects at the time and company levels separately as well as both time and company at the same time 22 Company fixed-effects: where: FOit is the foreign ownership ratio for company i in quarter t X 1, it Xk, it represents the k independent variables for company i in quarter t f3 •.• f3k are the coefficients on the respective independent variables F2 Fn are dummy variables for each of the n-1 firms, one firm dummy is omitted These dummy variables control for the firm-specific fixed-effects and represent the different intercept of the n firms y2 ••• Yn are the coefficients on the respective dummy firms Uit: is the error term assumed independently drawn, identically distributed normal with zero mean Time fixed-effects regression model: Where: Q2 Qt are dummy variables for the t-1 quarters in the data One quarter dummy is omitted as the reference quarter t51 t5t are the coefficients on the respective dummy time Time and company f'IXed-effects regression model: 23 We know that Fixed-effects seem to not work well with data which has slow changing variables over time According to the summary of variables in Table Al, only ROE has low mean and standard deviation However due to its importance, this thesis still considers its impacts on foreign ownership at listed companies Random-effects model: In the random-effect model, it assumes that the variation between firms is random and uncorrelated with independent variables in the model We have random-effects model as follows: where uit is the error term between firms and assumption in this setup is that uit Sit is the within-firm error The is uncorrelated with any of the independent variables xJ xk 4.2 Data description Data source All of data are taken from Hochiminh Stock Exchange (HOSE), including HOSE securities bulletin board, financial reports, annual reports and some variables will be calculated based on these collected data 24 Variables Dependent variable Foreign ownership (FO) measured as the percentage of shares owned by foreign investors In the Vietnamese stock market, FO can be understood as "room for foreigners" at a listed company Independent variables (1) Market capitalization (SIZE): is used to determine a company's size It is measured by multiplying the current market price of share of a company by its outstanding shares We expect that foreign investors prefer firm with large size (2) Return on equity (ROE): is the most important ratio to investors It shows the ability to make profit per each invested capital The formula to calculate ROE: ROE= Net Income/Shareholders' Equity The higher ROE shows that the company uses effectively the investor's capital, and it can balance between equity and debt in the operation process Investors tend to like firms with high ROE (3) Price-Earnings ratio (PE): is one of the most important analyzed indicators in investors' investment decision for stocks Earnings per share has decisive affects to the market price of a stock And PIE indicator shows the relationship between the market price (P) and Earnings per share and calculated by the formula: PIE= P/EPS Where as: P: market price at which a stock is buying or selling at current time 25 EPS: Net income after tax that a company pays for shareholders We expect that foreign investors would like to own a larger share in firms with high profitability That is, they tend to choose stocks with a high ROE and a low PIE ratio (4) Earnings per Share (EPS): This is the portion of profit that a company pays for each outstanding share EPS is used to show the ability to make profit of a company This is an important indicator to calculate a stock's price In this paper we expect EPS has a positive significance to foreign ownership (5) Leverage (LEV): is the ratio of total liabilities to total equity It shows the ability to meet long-term payment of a company We expect that foreign investors tend to hold more shares of low leverage ratios in order to avoid firms at risk of financial distress Due to the complication of calculating dividends of stocks, the paper will not consider the effect of dividends on foreign ownership at listed companies Some listed companies pay dividend quarterly, some others pay by annually or at different times of payment Some pay by cash, by shares or both So this is quite difficult to have a good data to analyze All of these variables are summarized as table below 26 Table 4.1 Variables Variable(s) FO SIZE Expected sign Dependent variable Foreign Ownership Independent variable Market capitalization (+) ROE Return on Equity (+) PE Price to Earnings ratio (-) EPS Earnings Per Share (+) LEV Source Definition (-) Leverage ratio PATTERN GROWTH VNI VN Index SSE Shanghai Index DOW Dow Jones Index HOSE Securities Bulletin Board HOSE Securities Bulletin Board HOSE Securities Bulletin Board HOSE Securities Bulletin Board HOSE Securities Bulletin Board Financial reports of firms Summarize monthly from HOSE Summarize monthly from Bloomberg Summarize monthly from Bloomberg And the suggested model includes for five main indicators determining the foreign ownership at listed firms is as follow: FO = f (SIZE, ROE, EPS, PE, LEV) 4.3 Steps to analyzing data Step 1: Do OLS regression Step 2: Random-effects and fixed-effects regression 27 Step 3: Breusch-Pagan Lagrange Multiplier (LM) and Hausman test Step 4: Do regression with change in foreign ownership (FO_change) Besides, the research also checks the pattern growth of VN Index with Shanghai Index, and Dow Jones Index Whereas Shanghai Index is also considered as an emerging market, the Dow Jones has long-run histories of development and is a big market This is aimed at comparing between an emerging stock market (Vietnam) and some long developed and highly stable stock markets Moreover, if there is a correlation in pattern growth between VN Index with Shanghai and Dow Jones, it can partially answer the reason why investors decide to invest into Vietnam market 28 CHAPTERS RESEARCH RESULTS This chapter presents results from analyzing collected data From then discussions are taken Some listed firms are also regressed as sample case study for the results of the whole sample Finally pattern growth between VN Index and some indices are examined If there is a correlation then it will be an answer for the reason why foreign investors invest in the Vietnamese market 5.1 Estimation results First, we look at Table 5.1 and Table 5.2 presenting summary statistics of the variables and a correlation matrix between foreign ownership and other variables At first glance, market capitalization and foreign ownership have high mean and standard deviation whereas return on equity has the lowest mean and standard deviation Additionally, in Table 5.2, it can be seen that foreign ownership positively correlates with market capitalization, EPS and PIE and negatively correlates with ROE and Leverage Table 5.1 Variables Summary Variables Foreign Ownership ROE EPS PIE Market Cap Leverage Mean Std Dev 28.84889 15.91868 0.0483863 0.043355 4.57727 3.687839 19.99735 60.28285 5574.516 2816.091 0.7066774 0.7066774 29 - Table 5.2 Correlation Analysis Independent variables Foreign Ownership ROE -0.0207 EPS 0.0866 PIE 0.0272 Market Cap 0.1639 Leverage -0.1601 Table 5.3 reports the regression results in cases of Pooled OLS, random-effects and fixed effects For the first regression, pooled OLS regression will be done We can see that ROE, Market capitalization and Leverage are statistically significant The coefficient on Market capitalization is positive while the coefficients on the ROE and Leverage variables are negative Except for ROE, Market capitalization and Leverage are true with the expected sign For this result, we can see that foreign ownership increases 4% if firms are bigger by 1% but reduces their owning at these firms 3% if leverage ratio increases by 1% ROE is also significant to Foreign ownership, but negative However, there could be common effects by company and the time that could bias this estimate Tải FULL (60 trang): https://bit.ly/3HzNy6t Dự phòng: fb.com/TaiHo123doc.net In this paper, dataset is panel data OLS regressiOn does not have the unknown intercept for each company This model assumes that this unknown intercept of all companies is equal This is not true in reality, and usually leads to bias and wrong conclusions So for a deeper understanding on the relationship and effects of the firm characteristics on Foreign ownership, as well as calculating the unknown intercept of 30 companies and coefficients for independent variables, regression techniques for panel data are used, including fixed-effects and random-effects Continuously, we will look at results for random effects at the company level and the time level respectively At the time level, we can see a result which is quite similar with the case of OLS regression However in the case of the company level, there are only two significant variables which are Market capitalization and ROE Table 5.3 also presents results from the fixed-effects models with company, time separately as common effects and with year and company fixed-effects together In the case of the company fixed-effects specification, when company is controlled for, Market capitalization and ROE are consistently significant But when we control for time fixed-effects, then even Leverage have an effect on Foreign ownership The most important specification in fixed-effects is two-way fixed effects model when we control for both time and company effects In this case, only Market capitalization and Leverage are statistically significant However, Leverage has positive effect on Foreign ownership which is not true with above expected sign and this case needs to be further considered Whereas Market capitalization still has positive relationship with Foreign ownership Tải FULL (60 trang): https://bit.ly/3HzNy6t Dự phòng: fb.com/TaiHo123doc.net 31 T I R' - Fixed-effects Random-effects I Foreign Ownenhip PooledOLS Company level Prob Coeff t-Stat Time level Prob Coeff -3.14 -62.2057 -0.45 0.66 -0.08491 0.48 -9.80E-05 -0.01 Coeff t-Stat ROE -{i5.80876 -3.79 -38.21862 EPS -0.0895793 -0.46 0.644 -0.0635653 PIE -0.0007491 -0.07 0.946 -0.0050069 -0.71 t-Stat Both company and time Time level Company level t-Stat Prob Coeff t-Stat Prob Coeff t-Stat Pro b -36.0138 -2.95 0.003 -51.5028 -2.86 0.004 -9.101029 -0.77 0.442 -0.06572 -0.46 0.645 -0.07427 -0.38 0.702 0.012208 0.09 0.927 -0.00479 -0.68 0.499 0.002024 0.18 0.855 -0.0022064 -0.34 0.736 3.4 0.001 3.19 0.002 Prob Coeff -3.56 -0.44 0.66 0.993 Market cap 4.639032 9.49 2.560102 3.28 4.675104 9.56 1.836663 2.04 0.042 4.783245 9.59 4.194981 Leverage -3.098772 -3.19 0.002 0.9998136 1.05 0.3 -3.10522 -3.21 0.001 1.369604 1.39 0.164 -3.13129 -3.22 0.001 2.983368 No of observations 476 476 476 ovemll = 0.1438 overall = 0.1892 476 476 476 ovemll =0.1136 overall= 0.1872 0.7647 0.1893 R-squared Adjusted R-squared 0.1807 0.737 - 32 6672557 ... paper investigates foreign ownership and firm- level characteristics of firms listed on the Hochiminh Stock Exchange - the formal and biggest stock exchange in Vietnam Applying fixed-effects and random-effects... determinants affecting to foreign ownership using dataset for the period 1996-2000 in the Taiwan equities The findings are that foreign investors like to invest in large firms Simultaneously, they... objectives, the study will answer following questions: Is there any relationship between foreign investors'' holding at listed firms with their financial indictors? Do foreign investors invest into the firm'' s