Does Corporate Governance Matter for Institutional Investors? Insights From International Evidence

We examine the impact of firms’ board structure, as a significant provision of firm-level corporate governance mechanism, institutional investors’ investment decisions. The results show that firms with independent board members, a higher representation of women on their boards, and a separation between CEO and chairman roles share characteristics that attract institutional investors, encouraging them to invest in these firms’ shares. Furthermore, the number of board members does not have a effect on the investment decisions of institutional investors. Similar results are observed for domestic and foreign institutional investors, indicating that these sub-groups share common factors influencing their investment decisions, except for the factor of CEO duality. The findings are robust to several sensitivity tests, including alternative measures of firm-level corporate governance, controlling for country fixed effects, and including additional control variables.