שווייה של שליטה בחברה ציבורית בעקבות רפורמות מקיפות בממשל התאגידי הישראלי

Does Israeli law restrain controlling shareholders? We examine the impact of the Israeli corporate governance reforms of the past twenty years – starting with the enactment of the Companies Law in 1999 – on the private benefits of control in publicly traded companies. We use the premium paid in control-transfer transactions to estimate the value of control for controlling shareholders. In a relatively large sample of 60 full-control-transfer transactions we find that during the sample period (2001-2019) the average value of control of an Israeli public company is about 10% and has decreased by about two-thirds relative to its value in earlier periods. The erosion of control value is evident even within our sample period: the estimated median value of control in the early decade of our sample period (2001-2010) is 9.9% of the company’s market value of equity, but only 5.5% in the later decade (2011-2019). It appears that currently, following all the reforms, the Israeli market does not exhibit high or excessive private benefits of control. Lastly, we also observe and document a significant negative correlation between the size of the company and the value of control, when control is measured as a percentage of the company’s market value.