Lelo Nxumalo

Continuing with the theme of corporate connectedness, I have calculated various measures of network structure in Malaysia's listed companies. I focus here on PageRank and Degree . Named after Google co-founder Larry Page -  PageRank is an algorithm used by the search engine giant to rank websites in its search results. I apply the algorithm here to rank companies in the network of cross shareholding in order to determine importance of a company. Degree is simply the number of shareholders a company has. The matrix graph below confirms my hypothesis that more important companies are likely to receive more links from other nodes in the network, namely other companies or institutional investors. Could it be that investors are good at picking winners or does having social capital (high connections) mean investee companies have greater access to resources than loosely connected firms?  Regressing Return on Shareholders' Funds on financial and network measures as at 201...

This is a follow-up to the previous post on Malaysia's corporate network. Using the same data set we can also observe the extent to which individuals feature on boards of different listed companies in the corporate network. The map below shows such a network. The bigger the node the greater the number of boards an individual sits on. As of 2015, the most connected person was listed in 54 companies (out of over 900 listed companies). On the other hand, the greatest number of individuals sitting on the board of any one company was 15. So who is this most connected person? According to the Malaysia Business Advisory , each registered company is required to appoint at least one Company Secretary - an individual licensed by the Malaysia Companies Secretaries Association. As such, the most connected people tend to be Company Secretaries. Their roles vary but they are primarily responsible for advising companies and ensuring that they comply with the Companies Act of 1965. A more interes...