Board characteristics and bank performance in emerging stock market

Abstract

The paper examines the relationship between financial performance and corporate board characteristics of Tunisian bank during the period of 2005-2018; we explore the impact of board structure characteristics such as board size, independence, institutional and duality on bank performance. Our results confirm the importance of board control within the bank; we find negative relationship between board size, board institutional members and bank profitability. The result proves non-significant enhancement in bank performance when the role of director and board president is separate. We conclude that Tunisian banks need to develop their governance mechanisms; set an optimal size and restructure the board composition. Tunisian banks need to improve their government strategy and the board composition to optimise their performance.