Journal of Business & Financial Affairs

Bankers on Board, Banks as Shareholders and Firms Performance: Case of the Tunisian Listed Companies

Abstract

Affes H and Hakim NH*

Unlike the Anglo-Saxon countries, where business financing is made through the financial markets, Tunisian banks play a more important role than the financial markets in funding the firms. In addition to their function as lenders, they can participate in the capital of companies and/or serve on their boards. Our results on a sample of 14 listed companies on the Tunisian Stock Exchange (STE) during the 2003/2009 period show that banks play an important role in the governance of the Tunisian firms and affect their performance. Based on this sample, we performed regressions of these two governance variables (banking participation in the firms’ equity and boards) on the firms’ accounting and stock performance. The obtained results show that, firstly, the banking investment in the firms’ share capital has a negative impact on the accounting performance measured by the ROA and the ROE and positively on the stock market performance (Tobin's Q and Marris) and, secondly, the banking presence in the board of directors has both a positive and negative impact on the accounting performance on the stock market performance.