The impact of the characteristics of the board of directors on the financial performance of Tunisian companies

The board of directors plays a key role as an internal mechanism of corporate governance. Indeed, its effectiveness is dependent on the presence of several factors, the most important are related to characteristics that relate primarily to the independence of its members, board size, the cumulative functions of decision and control, the degree of independence of the audit committee and the gender diversity of the board. To test the validity of our hypothesis, which states the existence of a certain deterministic between the board's characteristics and financial performance measured by three different ratios, namely ROA, ROE and Tobin's Q, we have developed three linear regression models. Our empirical validation was conducted on a sample of 26 companies listed on the Tunisian Stock Exchange (TSE) over a period that spans four years (2007-2010). The estimated models show satisfactory results showing the importance of the impact of board characteristics on financial performance of Tunisian companies.