Determinants of the SMEs’ economical and financial performance: The role of foreign capital

Abstract

Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are essential components of the Portuguese business structure. Due to their intrinsic features, they become an enticing target for foreign investors, causing consequences in all business levels, more importantly at an economic and financial level, more specifically at profitability. At an international level, the debate about its influence on profitability is broad, with one side of the argument defending the importance of foreign ownership on profitability, and the other advocating for its irrelevance. O objective of this study is to verify the impact of foreign capital on SMEs’ profitability. With the study of a sample of 5.667 Portuguese SMEs, from a broad range of activity sectors and for the period 2014-2018, it is used a random effects model for panel data analysis. Besides the complete sample, the data is also analyzed distinguishing between micro, small and medium firms and between firms pertaining to the manufacturing or commercial sectors. The results evidence that he foreign source of the capital does not have a significant impact on the profitability of SMEs.