Board governance and firm value in emerging markets

We explore how voluntary internal corporate governance (CG) disclosures in Nigeria and South Africa influence the firm value of listed firms, which is proxied by market capitalisation-to-book value, focusing on five internal board disclosures: board size, board meetings, board gender diversity, board audit committee meetings, and board independence. These governance mechanisms are based on Anglo-Saxon regulation, and the unbalanced panel data comprises 1,040 firm-year observations from 104 firms in both countries. The study used the generalised method of moments (GMM) estimation technique, whilst the dynamic ordinary least squares (DOLS) were deployed as a robustness check for additional validity. The results show that board size is positively and significantly associated with firm value. In contrast, audit committee meeting frequency has a significant negative relationship with firm value. Our results show that regulatory bodies and stakeholders must move beyond adherence to CG codes and be guided by the principles, with a bias for competencies and qualities of persons appointed to the board, and uphold clear objectives and effectiveness for board meetings and oversight responsibilities of directors.