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Ownership structure, board composition and CEO dominance: what does really matters to corporate deleveraging policies?

Aamer Shahzad (Department of Commerce, Gujranwala Campus, University of the Punjab, Lahore, Pakistan)
Mian Sajid Nazir (Institute of Administrative Sciences, University of the Punjab, Lahore, Pakistan)
Flávio Morais (Department of Management and Economics, Universidade da Beira Interior, Covilha, Portugal and Nucleo de Estudos em Ciencias Empresariais (NECE-UBI), Covilha, Portugal)
Affaf Asghar Butt (Department of Business Administration, Gujranwala Campus, University of the Punjab, Lahore, Pakistan)

Corporate Governance

ISSN: 1472-0701

Article publication date: 20 September 2024

85

Abstract

Purpose

The role played by corporate governance mechanisms on corporate deleveraging policies has not been clarified. Empirical evidence is confined to developed economies, even with conflicting and inconclusive results. This paper aims to examine the role of corporate governance mechanisms, such as ownership structure, board composition and CEO dominance, in explaining corporate deleveraging policies.

Design/methodology/approach

Using a sample of listed Pakistani firms between 2010 and 2022, this study resorts to binary response models to examine the effects of governance mechanisms on firms’ decision to go debt-free.

Findings

A greater ownership concentration, institutional ownership and family ownership increase the propensity for zero leverage. Board gender diversity decreases the propensity for deleveraging policies, which seems to indicate that the presence of females reinforces the monitoring function of the board. Finally, lower managerial ownership or CEO dominance decreases the propensity toward zero leverage (interest convergence hypothesis), but higher managerial ownership or CEO dominance increases the propensity toward zero leverage (managerial entrenchment hypothesis).

Practical implications

Risk-averse managers who prefer to control a firm using little or no debt will find it easier to implement these financing policies in firms with greater ownership concentration and where institutional holders have a substantial stake. For shareholders, this study suggests that investing in firms with females on board reduces the risk of corporate deleveraging policies being adopted for entrenched reasons.

Social implications

The presence of females on board seems to decrease the propensity of managers to adopt opportunistic actions and may also contribute to enhancing human welfare and society in developing countries.

Originality/value

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study considering the effect of board diversity on zero leverage. Another singularity is that this study exhibits a nonlinear relationship between managerial ownership and corporate deleveraging policy.

Keywords

Acknowledgements

The authors thank the Associate Editor, Professor Maggie Foley, and the anonymous referees for their valuable comments and suggestions on previous versions of this paper.

The authors thank the comments Professor Joaquim Ramalho and to participants at the 29th Annual Global Finance Conference in Braga, Portugal.

Flávio Morais gratefully acknowledges financial support from FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, IP and NECE – Research Centre for Business Sciences, within the projects: NECE UIDB/04630/2020 and DOI identifier 10.54499/UIDB/04630/2020.

Citation

Shahzad, A., Nazir, M.S., Morais, F. and Asghar Butt, A. (2024), "Ownership structure, board composition and CEO dominance: what does really matters to corporate deleveraging policies?", Corporate Governance, Vol. ahead-of-print No. ahead-of-print. https://doi.org/10.1108/CG-07-2023-0329

Publisher

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Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2024, Emerald Publishing Limited

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