Abstract: It has become a popular issue of common concerns in the society that listed companies inject assets through private equity placements for tunneling. Taking the listed companies from the stock markets in Shanghai and Shenzhen which injected assets through private equity placement from January 1, 2008 to December 31, 2013 as samples, this paper empirically examines the relationship between the assets injection through private placement and the major shareholders’ subscription ratio and their corporate performance. The results show that when the relationship between the assets injection through private placement and the original assets of the issuance companies is stronger, the proportion of private placement shares subscribed by the major shareholders will be higher. The further improvement of share proportion held by the major shareholders can be in favor of strengthening the control power of the major shareholders in the company, making the major shareholders play a better role in supervising the managers, thus the agent costs of the managers can be reduced and the corporate performance after assets injection can be improved. Therefore, investors and the securities regulatory departments should attach importance to the quality of the injection assets through private placement in order to protect the interests of investors.

Key words: private placement; asset injection; major shareholders; share subscription; corporate performance