Corporate governance and risk management in GCC banks

Abstract

The current study examines the relationship between corporate governance and risk management in GCC banks. It aims to contribute to the literature by providing empirical evidence from the GCC’s banking industry of the association between risk management and corporate governance characteristics such as role duality, board size and percentage of nonexecutives. Using sample of 900 observations from banks in the Gulf countries, non-parametric regression, Quantile and panel data analysis have been used to test the hypotheses and the proposed model. The study uses data from financial institutions in the Gulf countries over the period from 2003 till 2012. Findings suggest that role duality and board size are negatively associated with the risk management. On other hand the percentage of non-executive members on the board was found to be insignificant. Moreover, findings indicate a positive significant relationship between governmental ownership and risk management. The results suggest that Islamic banks have a positive significant association with risk management measured by capital adequacy ratio. The results suggest future research to explore the relationship between risk management and other types of ownership structure such as institutional ownership. Future research can focus on risk management framework and practices in Islamic banks as such banks have its own risk.