We document changes in New Zealand corporate board characteristics between 1995 and 2010, a period centred around the 2003 introduction of the NZX Corporate Governance Best Practice Code. Unsurprisingly, the representation of non-executive, independent and female directors on NZ boards rose...

Conventional wisdom suggests that CEO membership of the compensation committee is an open invitation to rent extraction by self-serving executives. However, using data from New Zealand – where CEO compensation committee membership was rel- atively common until quite recently – we find that...

We examine the impact of the December 2012 NZX listing rule change that introduced compulsory disclosure about gender diversity on NZ boards. Although criticised for its timidity, the rate of growth in female-held directorships increased significantly after the introduction of the new rule,...