Corporate governance practices in the banking sector of Bangladesh: do they really matter?

A well governed institution is expected to use its resources optimally and, thus, perform more efficiently and contribute positively to economic development of a nation. However, often, it can be seen that poor management of the stakeholders leads to less than optimal strategic directions for an institution. Due to recent global financial crisis and rising issues of the Bangladeshi banking sector, corporate governance is one of the factors that have gained considerable attention. Recent drive of the governance issues of the banking sector of Bangladesh is expected to bring positive change in the financial sector and, hence, it is crucial to assess whether complying with governance codes leads to desired outcome or not. Specifically, the main purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between performances of commercial banks with corporate governance factor along with some internal and macroeconomic variables. Thus, the listed commercial banks in the Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE) of Bangladesh were considered for the study. Subsequently, considering data availability of the time period (2011-2014), 29 listed commercial banks in the DSE have been considered and, hence, Ordinary Least Squared (OLS) regression models were used through Eviews 8.0 for analyzing the data. Though the study shows a positive relation between corporate governance and performances of banks, the statistical insignificance of the relation raises concern regarding various issues of corporate governance in the financial sector of Bangladesh.