Impact of Corporate Governance on Performance, Risk and Disclosure

The issue of corporate governance is not new since it emerged with the birth of the corporations. However, it becomes an important issue to the Asians, especially Malaysians, due the 1997/98 economics crisis. This study examines the impact of corporate governance on performance, risk and disclosure of the Malaysian listed banks over the period of 1996 to 2005. From the generalized least squares panel data regression; the results show that corporate governance mechanisms such as board leadership structure, board composition and board size as well as ownership variables such as director ownership, institutional ownership and block ownership do not play their roles significantly and consistently in three aspects. i.e. performance, risk and disclosure tested. In addition, by using simultaneous tests, the relationship among performance, risk and disclosure is examined based on the market discipline theory, signaling theory and risk and return theory. It is found that in the Malaysian context, the findings seem to be in line with theoretical expectation of market discipline and signaling theory, but not with risk and return theory.