Ricerc@Sapienza

Corporate governance of banks is important and unique (Levine, 2004). Sound bank corporate governance is a crucial element for promoting a more resilient financial system (FSB, 2013) and sustaining economic growth (BCBS, 2015). A systematic literature review is conducted on the articles published in peer-reviewed academic journals to identify the prevailing results in academic research on bank board characteristics, which is the most investigated topic in bank corporate governance.

This paper investigates the interplay between board-level governance characteristics, ownership concentration and firm performance in the Italian corporate landscape, which is characterized by high (though varying) degrees of ownership concentration. The empirical setting of this study is the Italian stock market and specifically a sample of non-financial firms included in FTSE MIB and mid-cap index of Milan stock exchange, spanning a five-year time period from 2011 up to 2015.