Ownership Structure and Goodwill Impairment in Listed Nigeria Financial Institutions

The broad objective of this study is to examine the effect of ownership structure on goodwill impairment in listed financial institutions in Nigeria. Ownership structure is proxies using director's shareholdings, ownership concentration, institutional ownership and chief executive officers shareholdings. The study used a purposive sampling technique and filter out financial institutions that do not satisfy the criteria set out for inclusion thereby arriving at the sample size of twenty five (25) financial institutions. Secondary source of data was used which was extracted from the annual financial statement of the sampled financial institutions from year 2011 to 2014. Logit multiple regression was adopted in this study. The findings reveal that ownership concentration and institutional ownership were both positive and statistically significantly related to goodwill impairment while chief executive officers shareholdings were positive but statistically insignificant to goodwill impairment decisions of listed financial institutions in Nigeria. It can be inferred to some extent that ownership structure and chief executive officers may not necessarily influence the goodwill impairment decision of managements in listed financial institution in Nigeria It is recommended among others that listed financial institutions should give more attention to their ownership concentration and institutional shareholdings in other to ensure the timely recognition of goodwill impairment so as to present their financial statement in its true and fair nature so that investor's interest will be protected.