In this paper, we investigate the relationship between business risk and financial performance of the Futures Commission Merchants (FCMs) in Taiwan. The business risk of FCMs is proxied by the adjusted net capital (ANC) ratio. In particular, the non-dynamic panel threshold model (Hansen, 1999) is used to analyze the effect of structural asymmetry of business risk and financial performance of FCMs. The sample period starts from January 1, 2005 through December 31, 2008 and the panel data is a balanced type. The empirical results show that there exists a significant threshold between the relationship of ANC ratio and financial performance. When ANC ratio is above the threshold value, there does not exit a significant relation between ANC ratio and financial performance. However, when ANC ratio is below the threshold value, financial performance has a significant negative relationship with ANC ratio. This implies that there might be some spaces for the limit of the ANC ratio to be appropriately downward adjusted for the FCMs to enhance their financial performance through expanding their business capacities.
