Corporate Governance Practices and Performance of Deposit Money Banks in Nigeria

Abstract

Performance of deposit money banks in Nigeria. The specific objective of the study was to critically appraise the relationship between size of board of directors, composition of board members, frequency of board meetings and return on assets of deposit money banks in Nigeria. The data were sourced through secondary sources from annual reports and accounts of sampled deposit money banks in Nigeria. The stated Null Hypotheses were tested through data analysis by using the correlation analysis as analytical tool. The research findings reveal that board size has a positive and strong relationship with return on assets while board composition has a positive but moderately strong association with return on assets. Furthermore, frequency of board meetings has a negative and very weak relationship with return on assets of deposit money banks in Nigeria. The implication of the findings is that increased board size could result in the improvement of financial performance of deposit money banks. The research found that such increase in number of members of the board will generate the desired outcome if it centers on independent nonexecutive directors with wealth of corporate governance experience, sound and profitable contacts, good and relevant education. The negative relationship with frequency of board meetings implies that banks should begin to trim down on number of board meetings as research has found that frequent meetings signal a crisis or distress situation with perceptions of going concern issues and bank failure. The study recommends that new independent non-executive professionals with critical governance and management attributes could be introduced into the board to improve the quality of decisions, earnings and general performance. Frequency of Board Meetings should be reduced to save cost and time while virtual meetings should be called more often than physical meetings as distance is no longer a barrier.