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This paper assesses how legitimacy conditions the market value of companies listed on the BM&F Bovespa. We specifically analyze how joining the Novo Mercado moderates the effect of legitimacy on company value. For such, 348 organizations were investigated between 2002 and 2007, which generated a total of 1357 observations. Adherence to the Novo Mercado, the prestige of board members and company reputation significantly affect market value. When the organizations are divided in accordance with the level of governance, cultural-cognitive origins and legitimacy standards are seen to significantly affect market value in groups with a lower degree of governance, whereas among Novo Mercado companies, the influence was not as significant. In face of these results, legitimacy is shown to be an important factor in explaining variability in the performance of publicly traded companies and the presence in differentiated listings of governance conditioned the influence of other origins of legitimacy in market value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]