The Effect of Board Characteristics on Iraqi Banks Performance

This article presents evidence on the association between board characteristics and operating performance in banks using unbalanced panel data of 20 banks in Iraq over a ten-year period from 2005–2014. This relationship is estimated by using pooled OLS approach. The empirical results provide evidence supporting a positive board composition, board size and bank performance. Nevertheless, it is also noted that banks with high percentage of female in the board of director is one of the reasons to make down the bank performance in Iraq. Taken together, findings of this study recommend that banks seeking some improvement in their financial performance should constitute more non-executive directors, big-sized boards of directors, and consisted of few female directors in the board.