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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact that ownership structure and board composition have on financial performance in a sample of Finnish small to medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs).

The data for this study were collected through a private survey. The financial data were collected from the Voitto+ register and observations were made from 2000 to 2005. The authors employ panel data estimation and 2SLS methods in their analyses.

Results suggest that the ownership structure affects both the growth and the profitability of small private firms. Firms with high managerial ownership levels exhibit higher profitability ratios but have lower growth rates. Firms with high venture capital firm ownership ratios are found to grow faster and are less profitable. The results on board structure suggest that board structure has little impact on the performance of small firms. The only significant result in this context is that firms with outside board members have lower growth rates and are less profitable.

The results of this study can be interpreted to indicate that owner‐managers are risk averse and that venture capital firms seek investments with high growth potential. The results could also imply that outsiders are taken on as board members in badly‐performing firms on financiers' requests, or because it is thought that they can enhance performance.

The paper is one of the few that shed light on how corporate governance and ownership structures affect the performance of small private firms.

The study aimed to examine the effect of corporate governance mechanisms on the performance of Egyptian firms listed in the Egyptian Stock Exchange (EGX) between 2014 and 2016.

We relied on agency theory and resource dependence theory to generate testable hypotheses and capture the empirical findings. We regressed various performance measures (Return on Assets; Asset Utilization Ratio, Tobin's Q) regarding governance mechanisms (institutional ownership, managerial ownership, board size, board frequent meetings, the presence of non-executive directors and female directors) while controlling for firm size, leverage, years of listing and market share. The study uses ordinary least square (OLS) and two stages least square (2SLS) regression analysis to address the possible endogenous impact of the firms' ownership structure.

Board gender diversity, the managerial ownership and frequent board meetings positively influence the Egyptian firms' efficiency measured by assets utilization, while the institutional ownership and board size have negative effects. When using Tobin's Q, the managerial ownership shows a negative effect while institutional ownership and board size present positive effects. When using 2SLS regression, findings remained stable whereas non-executive directors showed a significant negative association with assets utilization.

Policy makers are recommended to draft policies related to limiting the number of board members, diluting the government's indirect ownership of firms, empowering women in boardrooms and developing the skills needed for non-executive directors.

To the best of our knowledge, our study is one of very few that address firms' performance after a period of political instability accompanied by a greater role for females in the boardrooms of Egypt.

This paper aims to provide a twofold empirical comparison: first, a comparison between the impact of corporate governance mechanisms on agency costs proxies and firm performance measures, and second, this comparison was used before and after the 2008 financial crisis, capturing two different economic states.

Panel regression methods were applied to two data sets of non-financial firms incorporated in the FTSE ALL-Share index over the period 2005-2011.

The results provide evidence that not all mechanisms lead to lower agency conflicts and/or higher firm performance. Ownership identity has a significant impact and the role of the governance mechanisms changes with the changes in the economic conditions surrounding the firm.

The results lend support to the notion that forcing a certain code of practice on firms to follow could compel them to move away from conflict reduction governance structures.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper to provide a comparison of empirical evidence for the impact of board characteristics and ownership identity on agency costs and firm performance by using a comprehensive set of corporate governance mechanisms. This comparison challenges the prior studies that use performance as an indirect proxy for lower agency costs. Additionally, it compares the impact of the governance mechanisms during two different economic conditions.

The purpose of this study is to examine the mediating role of corporate board characteristics in the relationship between ownership structure and firm performance in the listed public limited companies of Bangladesh.

The study analyzed 527 annual reports of listed companies in Bangladesh for the years 2015-2017. The direct and indirect effect of ownership structure on firm performance was examined using AMOS 23. Baron and Kenny’s (1986) four steps procedure was used to establish the mediating role of board characteristics.

The results demonstrated that foreign ownership and director ownership have significant positive influence on both accounting and market based firm’s performance, while institutional ownership exhibits positive influence only on accounting-based performance (return on assets). With respect to mediating effect, the results show that board size and board independence partially mediate the relationship between ownership structure and firm performance.

The major limitation of the study is that it focuses only on three years data in examining the hypothesized relationship among the variables.

Investors, regulators and managers can get evocative insights, particularly who seek to improve their company’s performance in the capital market through restructuring their ownership structure and board composition.

The study focuses on both direct and indirect effect of ownership structure on firm performance in the context of an emerging and developing economy. In examining the indirect effect, the study uses board size and board independence as the mediating variables.

Using a data set of listed firms domiciled in Taiwan, this paper aims to empirically assess the effects of ownership structure and board of directors on firm value.

Using a sample of Taiwanese listed firms from 1997 to 2015, this study uses a panel estimation to exploit both the cross-section and time–series nature of the data. Furthermore, two stage least squares (2SLS) regression model is used as robustness test to mitigate the endogeneity issue.

The main results show that the higher the proportion of independent directors, the smaller the board size, together with a two-tier board system and no chief executive officer duality, the stronger the firm’s performance. With respect to ownership structure, block-holders’ ownership, institutional ownership, foreign ownership and family ownership are all positively related to firm value.

Although the Taiwanese corporate governance reform concerning the independent director system which is mandatory only for newly-listed companies is successful, the regulatory authority should require all listed companies to appoint independent directors to further enhance the Taiwanese corporate governance.

First, unlike most of the previous literature on Western developed countries, this study examines the effects of corporate governance mechanisms on firm performance in a newly industrialised country, Taiwan. Second, while a number of studies used a single indicator of firm performance, this study examines both accounting-based and market-based firm performance. Third, this study addresses the endogeneity issue between corporate governance factors and firm performance by using 2SLS estimation, and details the econometric tests for justifying the appropriateness of using 2SLS estimation.

This paper aims to examine the effect of audit firm governance on audit quality. Audit firm governance is broken down into two categories, namely, board ownership and engagement partner ownership.

Audit firms from Borsa Istanbul and their clients who are quoted there as well were used to test the hypotheses. The final sample covers 1,291 observations at the client level between 2013 and 2019. Ordinary least square was conducted to test the hypotheses. Heckman selection model and instrument variable regression with two-stage least square (IVREG with 2SLS) were also used to control the self-selection and endogeneity problems, respectively. To enhance the validity of the main results, alternative audit quality measures were used.

The empirical findings show that board ownership and engagement partner ownership have an impact on audit quality. The results indicate that engagement partners with high shares enhance audit quality only in Big4 audit firms. The positive effect of higher board ownership on audit quality is more prominent in non-Big4 firms. The Heckman two-stage procedure and IVREG with 2SLS were conducted, both of which were consistent with the main results. The results regarding alternative audit quality measures are in accordance with the main estimation results.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first study examining the impact of audit firm board ownership on audit quality. In addition, this paper further advances the literature by investigating the effects of ownership at engagement partner levels on audit quality in the context of an emerging market, Turkey.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the level of compliance with, and disclosure of, good corporate governance (CG) practices among UK publicly listed firms and consequently ascertain whether board characteristics and ownership structure variables can explain observable differences in the extent of voluntary CG compliance and disclosure practices.

This study uses one of the largest data sets to-date on compliance and disclosure of CG practices from 2008 to 2013 containing 120 CG provisions drawn from the 2010 UK Combined Code relating to 100 UK listed firms to conduct multiple regression analyses of the determinants of voluntary CG disclosures. A number of additional estimations, including two stage least squares, fixed-effects and lagged structures, are conducted to address the potential endogeneity issue and test the robustness of the findings.

The results suggest that there is a substantial variation in the levels of compliance with, and disclosure of, good CG practices among the sampled UK firms. The authors also find that firms with larger board size, more independent outside directors and greater director diversity tend to disclose more CG information voluntarily, whereas the level of voluntary CG compliance and disclosure is insignificantly related to the existence of a separate CG committee and institutional ownership. Additionally, the results indicate that block ownership and managerial ownership negatively affect voluntary CG compliance and disclosure practices. The findings are fairly robust across a number of econometric models that sufficiently address various endogeneity problems and alternative CG indices. Overall, the findings are generally consistent with the predictions of neo-institutional theory.

This study extends, as well as contributes to, the extant CG literature by offering new evidence on compliance with, and disclosure of, good CG recommendations contained in the 2010 UK Combined Code following the 2007/2008 global financial crisis. This study also advances the existing literature by offering new insights from a neo-institutional theoretical perspective of the impact of board and ownership mechanisms on voluntary CG compliance and disclosure practices.

This study aims to investigate the impact of ownership structure and board characteristics on dividend policy in the listed Turkish firms between 2013 and 2019.

This study uses the probability of paying dividends, dividend payout ratio and dividend yield measures. The suitable regression procedures (logit, probit and Tobit models) are used to examine the research hypotheses by focusing on a panel data set drawn from the Borsa Istanbul (BIST) 100 index, excluding financial and utility firms.

The empirical findings indicate that institutional and concentrated ownerships are significant and positively associated with dividend payouts, whereas family ownership does not influence dividend policy. On the other end, board size is positive, while chief executive officer duality is negatively related to dividend policy. Additionally, the female directors and board independence are insignificant in influencing firms to pay high dividends.

Future researchers can validate this paper’s findings by considering the stock dividends as well. Additionally, future researchers may investigate the relationship between these constructs by extending the sample size of firms listed on BIST or in other emerging markets.

This study’s findings may serve policymakers, regulators, investors and academic researchers to get valuable guidance from relevant literature. The Turkish firms may improve dividend policy by implementing the regulatory framework introduced by the Capital Markets Law in 2012 for effective monitoring and protecting the minority shareholders’ rights. The controlling shareholders may alleviate principal-principal conflicts by ensuring the independence of directors and increasing the number of female directors according to the critical mass of at least 30% of board members.

This study contributes to agency theory and signaling theory by considering ownership structure and board attributes among Turkish firms related to dividend payments.

The purpose of this paper is to empirically investigate the impact of board financial expertise on the shareholding of foreign institutional investors in an emerging equity market of China and to explore whether ownership concentration moderates the relationship between board financial expertise and foreign institutional investment.

To test the hypothesized relationships, this study uses panel data regression models, i.e. static (fixed effect and random effect) and dynamic (two-step generalized methods of moments) models. Further, to control the possible endogeniety issue, this study uses two instrumental variables, namely, board size and industry average financial expertise of board to proxy board financial expertise. This study covers a period from 2006 to 2015 for 169 listed Chinese firms.

The results revealed that foreign institutional investors positively perceived board financial expertise and holds more shareholdings with the increasing level of financial experts at boards of directors. Moreover, ownership concentration positively moderated this relationship. It means that in highly concentrated firms, the board financial expertise conveys a stronger signal to foreign institutional investors that firms can manage financial resources rationally by controlling negative effects of ownership concentration. Further, the robustness model also confirmed the relationship between board financial expertise and foreign institutional shareholdings.

To the best of authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to investigate board-level financial expertise as a determinant of foreign institutional ownership. Further, no previous study has used ownership concentration as a contextual variable on the relationship between board financial expertise and foreign institutional investment.

The aim of this paper is to examine the linkages between board ownership, audit committees' effectiveness in terms of the proportion of independent non‐executive directors (INED) and expert members on the audit committee and corporate voluntary disclosures.

The paper is based on a sample of 124 public listed companies in Malaysia for studying differences in corporate governance characteristics which affect the financial disclosure.

The empirical results indicate that that board ownership is associated with lower levels of voluntary disclosures. The result is consistent with the notion that board ownership increases agency costs resulting from information asymmetry between firm management and outsider investors. The negative relationship between board ownership and corporate voluntary disclosure is, however, weaker for firms with higher proportion of INED on the audit committee indicating that INED moderate board ownership/corporate voluntary disclosure relationship. Overall, the findings lend support for firms with a higher level of board ownership to include more independent directors on the audit committee to increase disclosure levels and reduce information asymmetry between firm management and investors.

This paper demonstrates the usefulness of corporate governance factors mainly board ownership and effective audit committee on financial reporting practices. It is expected that this research will have important policy implication to reduce information asymmetry and improves corporate governance.