Institutional investors and dividend payments: evidence in the oil industry

The debate over the impacts of shareholder value orientation on corporate management has been more intense with the increasing participation of institutional investors in companies’ ownership structures. In this context, the purpose of this study is to evaluate the influence of institutional investors’ shareholding on the payment of dividends in the oil industry. A regression model was used, estimated with the Generalized Method of Moments. The results indicated that the distribution of dividends is related to the profitability and the leverage of the companies, in addition to the history of distribution to shareholders. In general, the presence of institutional investors did not influence the dividend distribution. However, we observed a large participation of these investors in the ownership structure of companies in the oil and gas sector—the average control of these agents was around 25% in the companies of the sample. This study contributes to the literature regarding the influence of institutional investors on the corporate decisions of nonfinancial companies, being original in the context of the oil industry.