Ultimate Controlling Right, Ownership Structure and Firm's Performance of Chinese Listed Companies

The present ownership partition method is inadeguate to track down the ultimate controlling shareholders. The study adopts ultimate controlling right theory to classify ultimate controlling shareholders of listed companies. We find that 72.06 percent of the listed companies are government-controlled. But the percentage is decreasing. We also find that non-government controlled companies are 20.64 percent , with an increasing trend. We fail to track the ultimate controlling shareholders of 92 listed firms(7. 30 percent). The average ROE is 4. 70 percent. There is no significant difference in corporation performance among listed firms controlled by the government, family firms or other corporations.