Market Concentration and Investment Efficiency among Publicly Quoted Petroleum Marketing Companies in Nigeria
Market Concentration and Investment Efficiency among Publicly Quoted Petroleum Marketing Companies in Nigeria

Summary/Abstract: Market concentration becomes important when the firm attempts to show market leadership that might be injurious to consumer welfare in addition to the strong investment in the firm as the responsibility of shareholders since they have the residual claim on the firm. The study investigated the relationship between market leadership and investment efficiency of the firms in the Nigerian petroleum marketing sub- sector. Given the length of data available on the publicly quoted petroleum marketing companies, the study adopted shareholders fund, fixed assets and turnover as the concentration parameters and return on investment as efficiency parameter. Univariate and multivariate regressions were used as techniques. Results show that concentration parameters all tend to converge over a number of years. Turnover is the most representative with both the HHI and CR measures. Furthermore, the results also show that big does not always mean better as the firms with the highest market shares have poor investment efficiency. Also, results further show that the Nigerian market is slightly highly concentrated and this seems to be increasing over the years. Recommendation suggested concerns empowerment of the entrepreneurial and small private petroleum marketing firms to break through the barrier of capital intensity of the market as they are observed to be more active in the market when there is products scarcity than when products flow is normal.

• Details
• Contents