Review of corporate governance practices and financial distress prediction

Abstract

Good corporate governance practices play an import role in increasing the firm value. Based on the agency theory related to corporate governance, if an agent (management) does not protect interest of principal (shareholders) then, agency cost is occurred and this creates a bad impact on the corporate performance. Therefore, it is necessary to address weak corporate governance practices in early stages otherwise firms can go in financial distress and eventually become bankrupt. The objective of this current study is to conduct a nonsystematic review of literature on theories and models related to corporate governance and financial distress. In the light of thorough review of literature, it is found that corporate governance variables (i.e. ownership concentration, board size, board composition, CEO duality, level of independence of board from management and managerial ownership) are good predictors for predicting financial distress. Moreover, it is also found that these corporate governance variables were not only used separately for predicting financial distress but also used along with others variables (firm level and country level) for the purpose of enhancing quality of financial distress models.