The new NYSE rules for corporate governance require the audit committee to discuss and review the firm's risk assessment and hedging strategies. They also put additional requirements for the composition and the financial knowledge of the directors sitting on the board and on the audit committee....

The board of directors plays a key role as an internal mechanism of corporate governance. Indeed, its effectiveness is dependent on the presence of several factors, the most important are related to characteristics that relate primarily to the independence of its members, board size, the...

Regulators, proxy advisors and shareholders are regularly calling for independent directors. However, at the same time, independent directors commonly engage in numerous outside activities potentially reducing their time and commitment with the particular firm. Using Tobin's Q as an...

This article investigates the gender diversity of the corporate board of European Union banks. Employing a large sample of 612 European banks from 20 European countries, it identifies organizational characteristics that could be predictive of women’s presence on bank boards. We identify three...

In this article, we examine the factors determining the representation of women on boards of directors by considering three main questions. The first question deals with the relationship between characteristics of ownership and governance on one side, and female directorship on the other. The...

Purpose –The purpose of this study is to investigate the association between a corporate executive’s gender and audit fees. Based on the findings of extant research that there are gender-based differences that may have implications for the financial reporting process, the authors posit an...

Using a unique dataset on Italian banks, we firstly investigate the main determinants of women’s participation on top-decisional memberships and, secondly, we study correlations between women’s presence on boards and bank performance. Our main findings suggest that: 1) women are...

Female presence still concerns the minority of companies and a small number of women; female directorship is associated to some characteristics of firms and of women themselves, depending in particular on whether they have family links with controlling agents. Two very different models emerge....

We examine the presence of women in Italian corporate boards before the introduction of Law 120/2012. We consider all directors of publicly-traded firms in 2008-10 and investigate the potential determinants of having boards with gender-diverse representation and the correlation between female...

Italy ranks among EU countries with the fewest women on bank boards. Using a rich dataset on Italian banks that combines individual data on bank governance with different measures of performance and risk, this paper analyses the determinants of the gender gap in top positions. Econometric...