Board Structure and Corporate Financial Performance in Vietnamese Listed Firms

This study aims to demonstrate the relationship between board features and performance of firms listed on the Ho Chi Minh City stock exchange. There are six characteristics of board being considered, including board size, independent directors, chairman CEO, busy directors, foreign members on board, and managerial ownership feature. The data is collected from financial statements and reports of 194 firms classified to 9 industries. Both return on asset and return on equity are used to measure corporate performance. The results show the significant positive correlations between board size, foreign members and firm performance. In contrast, CEO duality has significant negative impact on ROA while significant positive effect is discovered when using ROE as performance measurement. This paper could not find significant relationship between independent members on board, busy directors and managerial ownership on firm performance. The findings may be suggestion to build corporate governance principles in Viet Nam and research in the future.