Incentive schemes and female leadership in financial firms

Abstract

Our purpose is 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. 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.