Corporate governance and risk-taking in New Zealand

Abstract

We analyse the impact of firm-level corporate governance practices on the riskiness of a firm’s stock returns in a setting that can be considered as less conducive to managerial risk-taking. Our empirical evidence, based on a comprehensive sample of New Zealand firms, shows that firms with large boards are associated with lower levels of risk-taking, ceteris paribus. Furthermore, our results indicate that multiple large shareholders facilitate higher levels of risk-taking by the firm. Finally, our results also show that concentrated shareholdings of inside directors have a negative relation to risk-taking. Our findings are robust to controls for the three potential sources of endogeneity. Since prior work documents results consistent with the view that institutional and market environments largely determine governance outcomes, our work has implications for managers, investors and policy makers, particularly in less developed capital markets with weaker corporate takeover regimes and less performance-oriented managerial compensation.