340 Int. J. Accounting and Finance, Vol. 8, No. 4, 2018 Copyright © 2018 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd. Does ownership structure matter to public listed firms? Review on the corporate governance and involuntary delisting practices Kimiya Akbarpoursokeh*, Azizah Abdullah and Fadzlina Mohd Fahmi Faculty of Accountancy, Universiti Teknologi MARA Shah Alam, Malaysia Email: kimiyaakbarpour58@gmail.com Email: aziza588@salam.uitm.edu.my Email: fadzli686@salam.uitm.edu.my *Corresponding author Abstract: This paper proposes a conceptual framework and investigates the ownership structure on involuntary delisting. To build the conceptual framework as a guide to reduce involuntary delisting through decreasing agency costs, protecting shareholders’ rights, the background of governance practices and agency theory to be utilised. By developing a deeper understanding of the relationship between ownership structures on involuntary delisting, evidence from preceding studies suggested that this structure is of main importance in corporate governance because it determines the motivations of managers to control the agency problem. Since the impact of corporate governance mechanisms in each country depends on especial conditions; therefore, the mixed results for each of its factors are seen in literature; but majority of research is consistent with higher institutional ownership, ownership concentration, managerial ownership, CEO ownership, foreign ownership, free float ratio, and family ownership and lower state ownership having a significant negative impact on the probability of involuntary delisting. Keywords: corporate governance mechanisms; ownership structure; institutional ownership; ownership concentration; managerial ownership; CEO ownership; foreign ownership; free float ratio; state ownership; involuntary delisting. Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Akbarpoursokeh, K., Abdullah, A. and Fahmi, F.M. (2018) ‘Does ownership structure matter to public listed firms? Review on the corporate governance and involuntary delisting practices’, Int. J. Accounting and Finance, Vol. 8, No. 4, pp.340–363. Biographical notes: Kimiya Akbarpoursokeh is a PhD candidate of Accountancy in Faculty of Accountancy, Universiti Teknologi MARA. Her research interests are corporate governance and delisting concept. Azizah Abdullah has been with UiTM for 30 years. Her current position is Director for Internal Quality Assurance. Her research interest is governance risk fraud and management accounting and public sector. She has been teaching masters program undergraduate and also professional programs.