Corporate governance and corporate failure: a survival analysis

This study investigates the association of various corporate governance attributes and financial characteristics with the survival likelihood of distressed firms. To address the manner in which firms evolve over time, we employ survival analysis techniques by incorporating Cox Proportional Hazards regressions. We longitudinally track an ex ante sample of 176 financially distressed firms. The results suggest that firms that replaced their CEO with an outsider, were more than twice as likely to experience bankruptcy. Furthermore, larger levels of blockholder and insider ownership over the sample period are positively associated with the likelihood of firm survival.