Financial Performance of Foreign and Domestic Owned Companies in India

ABSTRACT Foreign direct investment (FDI) is attracted into transitional economies like India for reasons like capital, technology, international markets, and managerial skills. Extant literature has focused on studying the impact of FDI inflows on financial performance at an aggregate level ignoring the differences in state regulations in industries. Further, in the case of India, the literature is confined to analysis in specific years. In this study, we examined whether foreign ownership has any impact on financial performance of firms in India over a period of time. We have conducted a pooled cross section time series analysis of 102 Indian pharmaceutical firms for the period 1998–2005. For the analysis, we used a novel, robust method of handling missing data thus making available twenty % more information than is otherwise possible. Foreign ownership is found to have a positive and statistically significant impact on the financial performance of pharmaceutical companies in India.