The Effect of Corporate Governance on Financial Performance of Listed Companies in Nigeria (Published)
This study investigated the influence of corporate governance (CG) on the performance of companies. The objectives of this study were to respectively analyze and determine, individually and jointly, the influence of board size, board composition and audit committee size on corporate performance (CP).The study employed exploratory research design. Ten (10) listed firms were chosen through a purposive sampling technique and data extracted from the annual reports of these firms from year 2010 to 2016. A panel data regression was used to analyse the data. CG was proxied with board size (BS), board composition (BC) and audit committee size (ACS) while performance was proxied with net profit margin (NPM). Findings revealed that board size had a significant negative correlation with NPM, board composition had a significant positive correlation with NPM, audit committee size had an insignificant correlation with NPM and board size, board composition and audit committee size had a significant joint effect on NPM. Thus, it was concluded in the study that smaller board size will increase performance and the board composition should consist more of the non-executive directors while the audit committee also should be reviewed from time to time.
Keywords: Audit committee size; Board composition; Board size; corporate governance