CORPORATE GOVERNANCE IN BALKAN FINANCIAL INSTITUTION, CASE OF ALBANIA

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Abstract

Corporate governance has at its backbone a set of transparent relationships between an institution’s management, its board, shareholders and other stakeholders. In this article, in the first part, the nature and purpose of corporate governance has been discussed with special emphasis on the problems of banks in the field of corporate governance. Corporate governance involves regulatory and market mechanisms, and the roles and relationships between a company’s management, its board, its shareholders and other stakeholders, and the goals for which the corporation is governed. Lately, corporate governance has been comprehensively defined as "a system of law and sound approaches by which corporations are directed and controlled focusing on the internal and external corporate structures with the intention of monitoring the actions of management and directors and thereby mitigating agency risks which may stem from the misdeeds of corporate officers. The financial crisis exposed flaws throughout financial markets and prompted much investigation into the way banks work. The ‘2008 crisis in the financial industry, among other causes, brought to light the conflict of interest between achieving aggressive results by the executives in order to obtain bonuses and the long-term risk associated with the commercial company in its business. This paper focuses on one line of investigation - the corporate governance of banks. It examines why governance of banks differs from governance of nonfinancial firms and where the governance of banks failed during the crisis; it also offers recommendations for improving the governance system. Bank governance has been the topic of much recent academic work and policy discussion (Senior Supervisors Group 2008, 2009; Walker Report 2009; Committee of European Banking Supervisors 2010). Because of their contemporaneous nature, there has been little connection between the academic approach and policy analysis. The purpose of this paper is to make such connections and ground the policy debate on scientific evidence. The Corporate Governance in banks is one of the most important discussions overall the world, being reinforced especially after the crises period. It is related with the sensitive situation and the stage of developments of the local economy and moreover with the impact of the crises that is still ongoing. As an answer, during late 2008 and beginning 2009, it has been noticed a fast reaction and total focus from all banks on building (if missing) and improving their structures of Corporate Governance. The liquidity problems suddenly affecting the banking sector constrained Banks to enlarge their activities / operations and forced them in better evaluating their investments. The importance of a strong financial sector in impacting the country’s economy growth through both level of banking development and stock market liquidity (Levine and Sara Zervos 1996, 1998) is quite evident even in the developing countries. Moreover, Peter Rousseau and Watchel (2000) findings’ confirm the positive impact of the stock market activity and the banking development. For this reason the governments in the developing countries are insisting in increasing credits of banks towards the private firms.
The banking system in Bulgaria, Romania, Serbia and Albania has certain similarities in terms of development stage, related with the economic growth rate as well. The banking system, there is operating for more than 100 years instead of 15-20 years of development in the remaining countries.

Keywords: Corporate Governance, Banking Sector, Board of Directors, the Principles, Best Practices

How to cite this paper: Dibra, R., & Bodini, J. (2013). Corporate governance in Balkan financial institution, case of Albania. Risk Governance and Control: Financial Markets & Institutions, 3(2), 30-38. https://doi.org/10.22495/rgcv3i2art2