Abstract

Foreign portfolio inflows increase the liquidity and the volume of finance available for financial institutions. At the same time, as foreign portfolio inflows finances in part the capital requirements of local companies, it can also increase the competitiveness of these companies. A huge surge of the inflows can be very inflationary because this forces the Central Bank of Kenya to expand the country’s monetary base by releasing counterpart domestic currency which eventually feeds into the inflationary process. The main aim of this study was to find out the effect of international portfolio equity purchases on security returns of listed financial institutions in Kenya. The study population was 21 financial institutions listed on the Nairobi Securities Exchange. Using purposive sampling technique the study concentrated on 14 financial institutions. The research design of the study was causal as it is concerned more with understanding the connection between cause and effect relationships. The study adopted panel data regression using the Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) method where the data included time series and cross-sectional. A unit root test was carried in this study to examine stationarity of variables because it used panel data which combined both cross-sectional and time series information. Panel estimation results indicated that international portfolio equity purchases have no effect on stock returns of listed financial institutions in Kenya. The study recommended implementation of regulations and policies that would attract foreign portfolio equity inflows in financial institutions.

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