Estructura de propiedad y su efecto en la política de dividendos en el contexto mexicano

In this paper we focus on analyzing if the ownership structure has any effect on the dividend policy in the Mexican market. The decision to pay dividends is one of the key elements within corporate policy, since that dividend policy has an influence on the company value. Therefore, decisions such as adopting a growth policy of the company through the profits reinvestment or destine these profits to dividends pay, could be influenced by the ownership structure. We base our analysis on three types of ownership structure: families, institutions (mainly banks) and small blocks of shareholders. Our results show that the concentration of ownership in families has a negative influence on the dividends payment, while the presence of institutional shareholders has an inverse effect. This indicates that the presence of large shareholders different to families have a dissimilar effect on dividend policy. Our work contributes to the literature in the context of emerging countries such as Mexico, since much of the existing research has focused primarily in environments such as Europe or the United States, where markets are well regulated with widely distributed property.