Incentive Schemes and Female Leadership in Financial Firms

Purpose: To explore how performance in Swedish financial companies is affected by the presence of a female chief executive officer (CEO), the presence of an incentive scheme, and the proportion of female board members. Design/methodology/approach: Our sample consists of data from the last 10 years of all the 43 companies within GICS 40 listed at the Swedish stock exchange OMX Stockholm. We used multiple regressions to explore the association between the explanatory and firm performance variables. Findings: The results indicate that a female CEO is associated with a lower return on equity (ROE) and a lower Tobin’s Q, but we find no significant association between the proportion of female board members and firm performance. An incentive scheme is generally associated with a lower return on assets (ROA) and a higher Tobin’s Q. In particular, a share-based incentive scheme is associated with a lower ROA, a lower ROE, and a higher Tobin’s Q. Originality/value: To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper to analyse governance in financial firms with respect to female leadership as well as to incentive schemes. We conclude that governance structures in financial firms need to balance accounting-based and market-based performance. A large focus on share prices, especially at a certain time, may create short-term effects that need not necessarily be optimal in the long run for shareholders