Authors: Sotiria Schoina, Petros Kalantonis

Title: The impact of the corporate governance on firms' performance. Evidence from the Greek listed firms.

Abstract

We investigate whether the characteristics of boards of directors are associated with firms’ performance. By employing a sample of listed firms in the Athens Stock Exchange during the period from 2008 to 2016 and applying two different performance models to explore, via the discretionary accruals, for such a relationship, we surprisingly found no evidence of almost any effect of the investigated board characteristics, except CEO duality.   Besides, we also found significant variation over time. This finding which confirms the unpresented effect of the sovereign debt crisis on Greek firms. Corporate governance legal framework has been improved since the mandatory adoption of the International Accounting Standards, at least from the listed firms in the Athens Stock Exchange in 2005. Under the new rules, more detailed corporate governance information is included in the firms’ financial reports during the last decade.