Empirical Research on Expropriation Behavior of Controlling Shareholder Based on Legal Perspective

With the changes of the themes in the study of listed companies, the research on the controlling shareholders´ expropriation to minority shareholders has generally become the core problem in the exploration of modern corporate governance. Foreign research shows that the construction of the legal system has an important role in the constraints to the controlling shareholders expropriation. By empirical analysis on the Chinese listed companies which conducted equity transfer in A-share markets of Shanghai and Shenzhen during 2000-2005, this article draws the conclusion that the perfection of legislation can effectively restrict controlling shareholders´ expropriation. The stronger the application of law enforcement, the higher the controlling shareholders´ violating standard to the investors´ interests. The reason may be that although the whole legislation environment was improving during 2000-2005, yet the legislation shortage in some specific areas resulted in the increase of law enforcement cost, and eventually got little effect with improving law enforcement. This shows that China should continuously perfect its legislation in various specific areas in the improvement of overall legal environment.