Impact of Corporate Governance on Firm Performance

Abstract
The study is devoted to check the impact of corporate governance (CG) on the firm performance (FP) of the insurance industry of Pakistan. Four measures have been used in the paper to check the firm performance being affected by the corporate governance. These measures are Return on Assets (ROA), Return on Equity (ROE), and Market to Book ratio and Price Earnings ratio.
Data of 24 insurance companies is taken from websites of the companies and Karachi Stock Exchange website for the years 2007-2011 making up 107 observations excluding the missing observations. Pooled Ordinary Least Square (POLS) regression technique is used to regress the data. Findings of this study conclude that Institutional Shareholding ratio, Board Size and Independent Directors’ ratio affect firm performance in the positive way whereas, CEO duality, Firm size, and Leverage have negative impact on firm performance overall when firm performance measured through four different measures.

In future, the study may be extended to more corporate governance variables and increased sample size so that more generalized results may be achieved. Key words: Corporate Governance, Firm Performance, Insurance Industry, Pakistan. Introduction C orporate governance has now gained very much importance in the corporate world. Almost in all the countries around the globe corporate governance has become mandatory and is regulated by the concerning bodies. Like in Pakistan, this is mandatory for the corporations to comply with the best practices according to the Code of Corporate Governance [*].
Various studies have attempted to probe into the relationship of corporate governance with the firm performance in the corporate world across various countries. The study strives to investigate the impact of corporate governance on firm performance in the Insurance industry of Pakistan. The study basically extends the findings of Naser Najjar (2012), in his study; Naser * Code of corporate governance is included in the Regulation No. 37 for the listing regulations of Karachi Stock Exchange to ensure the best practices of corporate governance in Pakistan.
Najjar (2012) investigated the relationship of corporate governance with firm performance by empirically examining this relationship of CG and firm performance in the insurance industry of the Behrain. In his study Naser Najjar (2012) used only Return on Equity as a measure of the financial performance. This study employs more financial performance measuring variables like Return on Assets, Market to Book ratios, and Price Earnings ratios by controlling firm size and the leverage ratio.
Naser Najjar (2012) found a positive association between firm size and the performance of the insurance companies suggesting that as the size increases the assets are more with the firms in the form of insurance policies and firms efficiently manage things to an ultimate gain. In their study Ming-Cheng Wu, Hsin-Chiang Lin, I-Cheng Lin, and Chun-Feng Lai found the positive relationship of firm size with the performance when measured by Return on Assets.
Board size showed a negative relation in the past studies as in the study of Ming-Cheng Wu, Hsin-Chiang Lin, I-Cheng Lin, and Chun-Feng Lai; they found that board size is negatively associated with the firm performance due to the reason of board’s composition of inside as well as outside directors, and inside directors would have relatively high level of information regarding company’s internal affairs than outside directors and inside directors would work in their own interest and may confiscate the rights of shareholders and as the number of inside directors increases it makes the performance down.
While another study, Bacon (1973) gave a different opinion that larger board size positively affects the performance justifying in a way that larger board usually comes with a diversified background and qualifications which generates different viewpoints and hence increases quality of managerial decisions. One another very important way to control corporate bodies by reducing agency issues is to separate the CEO from Chairman (William et al. 2003).
If these two characters are performed by a single individual, is known as CEO Duality. This situation if exists, reduces firm performance as there would be no one to “watch the watchers” (Zubaidah 2009). Independency of directors yet another variable to reduce confiscation of shareholders’ rights as independent directors would work in the best interest of the shareholders. The more the independent directors in the board, higher will be the performance of the firm (Zubaidah 2009).
Upcoming sections are composed as; Next section reviews the literature regarding the variables of corporate governance and performance measure. Then there comes the methodology section followed by the findings and results with conclusion at the end. Review of Literature Enormous studies empirically investigated the relationship between corporate governance and firm performance regarding various types of industries and across the world. Insurance industry is one of the financial sectors of any economy and it continuously gaining importance in Pakistan.
Likewise, the issues of governing corporate bodies are raised during practices, the reason the study intends to check impact of corporate governance on the firm performance in the insurance industry of Pakistan. A number of studies used ROE and ROA as a measure of performance while checking for the impact of corporate governance on these variables. Naser Najjar (2012) found that there does not exist any significant association between CEO Duality as a measure of corporate governance and Return on Equity (ROE) as a performance measure.
Masood Fooladi Chaghadari (2011) found negative relation between CEO Duality and firm performance which tells about the fact that if a single person acts as CEO and Chairman of the board it will reduce the performance of a firm. The study of Sanjai Bhagat & Brian Bolton (2007) also suggests the same results; the separation of CEO and Chairman of the board is positively and significantly associated to the firm performance. Anthony Kyereboah-Coleman (International Conference on Corporate Governance in Emerging Markets) in his study found that CEO duality has negatively relationship with the firm performance.
Sanjai Bhagat & Brian Bolton (2007) found very interestingly the negative relationship of board independence with operating performance and made it relevant that with respect to the board independence which received corporate governance listing requirement from NYSE and NASDAQ. Masood Fooladi Chaghadari (2011) found negative relation of leverage with ROA and positive relation of the same variable with ROE. Anthony Kyereboah-Coleman (International Conference on Corporate Governance in Emerging Markets) also found negative relation of leverage with Return on Assets. Methodology I. Sample Data
The study initially undertook data of randomly selected 27 insurance companies of Pakistan from 2007-2011 making up 135 observations out of which 3 companies showed incomplete information due to which they were excluded from the study and 13 observations were missing in the data. The study then includes 107 observations. Data is collected from Karachi Stock Exchange (KSE) and websites of insurance companies. Current study has used Pooled Ordinary Least Square (POLS) regression method to regress the data collected to fulfill the objective of measuring impact of corporate governance on firm performance.
Models In order to measure the firm performance the current study uses 4 different measures viz. Return on Assets (ROA), Return on Equity (ROE), Market to Book ratio (MB ratio), and Price Earnings ratio (PE ratio) and variables Board Size (BS), Institutional Shareholding ratio (ISH ratio), CEO duality (CEOD) and Board Independence as corporate governance variables while Leverage ratio (LEV) and Firm Size (FS) are controlled and included in the models as follow:- Perf(ROA) jit = ? 0 + BS jit? 1 + ISH jit? 2 + CEODjit? 3 + IDjit? 4 + LEVjit? 5 + FSjit? 6 + ? Perf(ROE) jit = ? 0 + BSjit? 1 + ISHjit? 2 + CEODjit? + IDjit? 4 + LEVjit? 5 + FSjit? 6 + ? Perf(MB) jit = ? 0 + BSjit? 1 + ISHjit? 2 + CEODjit? 3 + IDjit? 4 + LEVjit? 5 + FSjit? 6 + ? Perf(PE)jit = ? 0 + BSjit? 1 + ISHjit? 2 + CEODjit? 3 + IDjit? 4 + LEVjit? 5 + FSjit? 6 + ? Where: Perfjit= Firm Performance measured by ROA, ROE, MB, and PE ratios form firm j, ith observation at time t. ?0= the intercept. BS = Board Size ISH = Institutional Shareholding CEOD = CEO Duality ID= Independent Directors LEV = Leverage Ratio FS = Firm Size ? = Stochastic disturbance term, and all the betas are coefficients of change rate in the variables against one unit increase.
Variables Definition Table 1 AcronymVariable NameProxies Dependent Variables ROAReturn on AssetsProfit Before Tax/Total Assets ROEReturn on EquityEarnings Available to Stockholder/Total Equity MBMarket to Book ratioMarket price Per Share/Book value Per Share PEPrice Earnings ratioMarket price Per Share/Earning Per Share Independent Variables BSBoard SizeNumber of Directors in the Board of Directors ISHInstitutional ShareholdingPercentage shares held by Institutional Investors CEODCEO DualityDummy variable, equals to 1 if CEO and Chairman is the same person or 0 otherwise.
IDIndependent DirectorsThe ratio of No. of Independent Directors/Total Number of Directors in the Board of Directors LEVLeverage ratioTotal Debt/Total Assets FSFirm SizeNatural Log of Total Assets Results Table 2 discusses the descriptive statistics of all the variables including dependent variables Return on Assets (ROA), Return on Equity (ROE), Market to Book ratio (MB), and Price Earnings ratio (PE). The mean value of PE 5. 134 is less as compared to the other dependent variables which denote the lower earnings gained by insurance companies as compared to the mean value of ROE which is 12. 91 which is almost double and depicts the picture that insurance companies earn more on equity. BS mean value 10. 654 shows that on average nearly 11 numbers of directors is part of the board having a standard deviation of 1. 108. On the average 40. 489% of all the issued share of an insurance company are held by institutional investors with a standard deviation of 6. 333%. The ratio of CEOD in the insurance industry of Pakistan is 0. 477 which expresses that on the average there are 47. 7% companies where CEO and Chairman is the same individual.
The mean value of ID, 0. 425 tells about the average ratio of board independence in an insurance company in Pakistan. Leverage value of 0. 581 shows that on average an insurance company employs 58. 1% debt in the capital structure ratio. Table 2 Descriptive Statistics MeanMinimumMaximumStd. Deviation ROA9. 631-25. 63852. 78320. 035 ROE12. 791-53. 85989. 36936. 980 MB5. 1343. 427. 781. 456 PE10. 3428. 716. 62. 059 BS10. 6549121. 108 FS16. 72916. 17917. 2130. 288 ISH40. 48931. 23053. 9306. 333 CEOD0. 477010. 502 ID0. 4250. 2220. 6670. 091 LEV0. 5810. 3990. 6930. 073
Table 3 models summary tells about the R-Square(s), Adjusted R-Square(s) and the Durbin-Watson values which tell about the fact that is there any auto-correlation problem? The calculated values for the models individually tell that there is not auto-correlation problem as all the values are in the range 1. 5-2. 5. Adjusted R-Square of model 4(PE) is largest 0. 897 which tells that all the covariates explain the model by 89. 7%, while the Adjusted R-Squared value of model 3 is smallest 0. 722 which explains about 72. 2% of the model. Table 3 Models Summary ModelRR SquareAdjusted R SquareStd.
Institutional Shareholding has the largest coefficient 0. 845 which means that it has a strong positive relationship with Return on Assets. Firm size also has significantly positive relation with the return on assets. Board size unexpectedly showed a very weak relationship with the return on assets, the coefficient is 0. 048. CEO duality is another case which has a weak positive relationship with ROA, the coefficient of CEOD and ROA is 0. 034. The empirical evidence shows that there is negative relation between firm size, institutional shareholding, leverage and board size either the relations among these variables are not strong.
Firm size has negative relation with the return on assets which is consistent with the literature. CEOD has negative impact on the firm performance when it is measured by ROA; the results are not significant but support the literature. While, Board Size (BS), Institutional Shareholding (ISH), Independent Directors (ID), and Leverage has positive impact on firm performance. There is no multi-collinearity problem with the variables as suggested by the VIF values. Table 6 Coefficients ModelVariablesUnstandardized Coefficients Standardized CoefficientstSig.
Again consistent with the previous model, Institutional Shareholding has the largest coefficient which shows a strong relation of ISH with ROE. COED has the smallest coefficient but has positive association with the ROE. BS has negative relation with Firm size, ISH and Leverage which in line with the literature. Independent directors’ ratio is negatively associated to the ISH but has a weaker relationship. ID has also inverse relation with leverage and also has weak relation. Table 7 Pearson Correlations ROEBSFSISHCEODIDLEV ROE1 BS0. 0531 FS0. 485-0. 0451 ISH0. 739-0. 2130. 3911 CEOD0. 0190. 2140. 0360. 0921
Independent directors’ ratio is negatively associated to the leverage ratio also. Firm size has strong positive relation with independent directors’ ratio; the correlation coefficient between these two variables is 0. 770. Table 9 Correlations MBBSFSISHCEODIDLEV MB1 BS-0. 0411 FS0. 005-0. 0451 ISH0. 624-0. 2130. 3911 CEOD-0. 2240. 2140. 0360. 0921 ID-0. 0310. 0750. 770-0. 097-0. 0301 LEV0. 375-0. 010-0. 0010. 425-0. 321-0. 1531 In Table 10 dependent variable is Market to Book ratio. In this model Firm Size (FS), COE Duality and Leverage have negative but significant impact on firm performance.
Variables Board Size, Institutional Shareholding and Independent Directors’ ratio have positive and significant impact on firm performance. Negative coefficient of FS -0. 927 means every unit increase in firm size will lead to -0. 927 times decrease in firm performance. The results are consistent with the previous literature. VIF statistics show that there is no multi-collinearity problem. Table 10 Coefficients Model Unstandardized Coefficients Standardized CoefficientstSig. Collinearity Statistics BetaStd. ErrorBeta ToleranceVIF 3(Constant)67. 2377. 464 9. 0080. 000* BS0. 2590. 0730. 1973. 5540. 001*0. 501. 176 FS-4. 6920. 491-0. 927-9. 5470. 000*0. 2783. 595 ISH0. 2740. 0181. 19014. 9240. 000*0. 4132. 424 CEOD-1. 0680. 172-0. 368-6. 2070. 000*0. 7461. 341 ID11. 0621. 4160. 6927. 8140. 000*0. 3342. 993 LEV-2. 8151. 292-0. 142-2. 1790. 032**0. 6201. 613 Dependent Variable: MB. *, **, *** show 1%, 5% and 10% significance level respectively. In table 11, dependent variable is Price Earnings ratio and it shows the Pearson Correlation coefficients. Inconsistent with the previous models, Institutional Shareholding has negative and strong relationship with Price Earnings (a measure of firm performance).
In this model Leverage also has strong negative relationship with firm performance. Firm Size, ISH, and LEV are negatively associated with Board Size. But only the leverage has negative relation with Firm size, CEO duality and Independent Directors’ ratio. Independent Directors’ ratio has strongly positive relationship of 0. 707 with Firm size. Table 11 Pearson Correlations PEBSFSISHCEODIDLEV PE1 BS0. 0531 FS0. 406-0. 0451 ISH-0. 582-0. 2130. 3911 CEOD-0. 1050. 2140. 0360. 0921. 0 ID0. 6680. 0750. 707-0. 097-0. 0301 LEV-0. 575-0. 010-0. 0010. 425-0. 321-0. 1531
This study finds that Board Size (BS), Institutional Shareholding (ISH) and Independent Directors’ ratio have positive and significant impact on corporate governance. The reasons are if Board size is large, the board has members having diverse background, more viewpoints, and competitive and experienced individuals which lead towards right decision making and towards better performance as compared to the industry norms. Institutional investors have more interest in the investment and management skills which adds to the performance of the firm.
The more the Independent Directors in the board, the more the transparency and integrity which ultimately leads towards enhanced performance. CEO duality have negative impact on the firm performance due to reason that inefficiencies and mismanagement in the operations is not watched by any independent person which make the performance of the company worse. The study also finds that Firm Size and Leverage also have negative impact on firm performance. As the size of the firm increases due to the reason of diseconomies of scale it puts worse impact on the financial performance of the firm.
For the future research, scholars may increase the sample size to get more generalized results and there should be included more corporate governance variables like family ownership, concentration, directors’ remuneration and many others. References Najjar, Naser (2012). “The Impact of Corporate Governance on the Insurance Firm’s Performance in Bahrain”. International Journal of Learning & Development ISSN 2164-4063 2012, Vol. 2, No. 2 Zubaidah Z. A. , Kamaruzaman J. and Nurmala M. K. (2009). Board structure and corporate performance in Malaysia.
International Journal of Economic and Finance 1(1): 150-164. Williams S. M. and Ho C. A. (2003). International Comparative Analysis of the Association between Board Structure and the efficiency of Value Added by a Firm from its Physical Capital and Intellectual Capital Resources. The International Journal of Accounting 38(4):465-491. Ming-Cheng Wu, Hsin-Chiang Lin, I-Cheng Lin, Chun-Feng Lai. “The Effects of Corporate Governance on Firm Performance”. Chaghadari, Masood Fooladi (2011). “Corporate Governance and Firm