Board governance, ownership structure and financing decisions in emerging market

Abstract

This paper aims to contribute to the corporate governance literature by examining the effects of board governance and ownership structure on financing decisions in an emerging country context. Using hand collected corporate governance data from a panel sample of 110 publically-listed firms in Bangladesh over 2009-2012, this study finds that the corporate debt ratio is not related to standard board of directors mechanisms.The results indicate that board of directors play little role in resolving conflicts in an environment with the presence of strong principal-principal agency conflict. The study also finds no evidence of institutional investors’ activism in a manner that is consistent with the goals of other outside stockholders due to the weak regulatory and market discipline. This empirical evidence from the principal-principal agency conflicts (conflict of interest between majority shareholders and minority shareholders) offers insights to policy makers in emerging countries interested to protect minority shareholders’ rights and to ensure effective corporate governance of capital structure decisions.