The Effects of Organizational Forms of Mutual Fund Management Company on Mutual Fund Performance

Abstract

The organizational form of a company indicates whether it is publicly-traded or privately-held. The effects of the organizational forms on a company’s operations and performances have been well documented. However, because the organizational form of companies in the finance industry is so different from those in other industries, the effect on performance is quite different. There has been little research done to determine how the organizational form of mutual fund management companies affect the performance of their mutual funds.

This thesis examines the impact of mutual fund management companies on the performance of their managed funds using data that cover the period 2007 to 2016 on 782 different firms. The results showed that the performance of mutual funds managed by publicly-traded mutual fund management companies was significantly compared to those managed by privately-held companies. Based on the sample data, the hypothesis of this thesis is that publicly-traded and privately-held fund management companies have different incentives and interests that impact mutual fund performance. The thesis also addresses the issues of discontinuous returns and endogenous organizational form variables. The test results examined in this thesis support the notion that mutual funds managed by publicly-traded companies underperform compared to industry benchmarks. In addition, funds managed by publicly-traded management companies perform poorer in general compared to funds managed by privately-held companies.