CORPORATE GOVERNANCE PRACTICES IN EUROPE: A DESCRIPTIVE STUDY

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Abstract

Our study examines corporate governance practices in Europe according to the best practice guidelines of 17 countries. We particularly focus on the independence criteria of Board members. Doing so, we wish to understand how these best practices are enforced in the actual corporate governance guidelines in each country. To better define the independence criteria, which is very different among European countries, we develop our own measure of independence, taking into account the strictest criteria of independence recommended in the corporate governance codes of the studied countries. Then, we gather firm-level statistics on a sample of 463 European firms to understand whether the best practice guidelines are actually enforced by these firms. Hence, we contribute to the existent literature by presenting descriptive statistics on the compliance of European firms to their national guidelines. Our findings show that most European firms tend to comply with their local best practice guidelines of corporate governance. We also document a high compliance of our European sample-firm with the Anglo - Saxon best practices of corporate governance.

Keywords: Corporate Governance, Board Independence, Ownership Concentration, Audit Committee Independence

How to cite this paper: Metushi, E., Di Vito, J., Fradeani, A. (2016). Corporate governance practices in Europe: A descriptive study. Corporate Ownership & Control, 13(2-1), 238-249. https://doi.org/10.22495/cocv13i2c1p5