The Role of Corporate Governance Failure in the Banking Sector

Abstract

Corporate governance is the organizational arrangement by which a company represents and serves the interests of its investors. It encompasses anything from a company’s boards to executive compensation schemes to bankruptcy laws. Generally, the definitions of corporate governance which was found in the literature tend to share certain characteristics. One of this characteristic is the notion of accountability. Corporate governance is the process of supervision and control which intends to ensure that the company’s management acts in accordance with the interests of shareholders (Parkinson, 1994). Corporate governance, the internal policies and leadership that guide the actions of corporations, played a major part in the recent global financial crisis. While much blame has been targeted at compensation arrangements that rewarded extreme risk-taking but did not punish failure, the performance of large, supposedly, sophisticated institutional investors in this crisis have not been examined. Corporate governance has come to the forefront of academic research due to the vital role it plays in the overall health of economic systems. Corporate governance was long ignored as a matter of potential importance for the development of a nation’s economy. This paper, however, expresses some cases in the field of corporate governance, regarding the failure of corporate governance. Institutional investors failed to effectively monitor such volatile investments, ignoring relatively well-established corporate governance principles and best practices. Corporate Governance Failures offers nuanced and realistic proposals to mitigate future financial pitfalls.