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Authors: Adalmiro Alvaro Malheiro de Castro Andrade Pereira, Ângela Daniela da Silva Vaz
Keywords: corporate governance, Portuguese banks, compliance, bank management
Abstract: Corporate governance can be defined as the system of laws, regulations and factors that control operations in a company. We can see it as the ways in which investors provide financing to corporations to guarantee the return on their investment. Therefore, corporate governance can act as a group of mechanisms used by stakeholders to ensure that managers maximize shareholder wealth. These mechanisms refer to the methods used by the shareholders to reduce the costs of the management agency, such as the composition of the board, the voting rules and the stock administrators. The research problem is one of the fundamental phases of this study process. Its correct definition will allow centralizing research in a specific area as well as organizing the study, reviewing the literature and pointing out data to be collected. The delimitation of the scope of this study thus corresponds to the first phase of the work to be carried out, allowing framing the problem under study. The scope of this work focuses on corporate governance, namely the way it is used by banking institutions in Portugal. The objectives allow indicating the main intention of the project, corresponding to the final product that is intended to be achieved. Thus, the main objectives can be summarized as follows: i) Investigate the role of corporate governance to help improve the performance of the banking institution; ii) Investigate the perception of different stakeholders about the main events that affect corporate governance and select the main independent variables that interact with corporate governance. The research process consists of a series of phases: problem formulation, specification of research objectives, choice of research formulation, data collection, sampling, data analysis and research report. The definition of the problem, as mentioned in the previous point, is the starting point of what is intended to be investigated, and this step is the most relevant in the preparation of any study. The problem is something unresolved that is the subject of discussion in any domain of knowledge. The variables can be qualitative and quantitative. The variables can be qualitative and quantitative. In the first case, the variables are divided between nominal and ordinal. In the case of nominal qualitative variables, it is not possible to establish any kind of order from the beginning, which is already possible in the case of ordinals. The methodology, in this work, must be quantitative. The registration process of the variables will be through statistical programs (Eviews, Stata, SPSS). A multiple linear regression will be created, which is the most common form of linear regression analysis. As a predictive analysis, multiple linear regression is used to explain the relationship between a continuous dependent variable and two or more independent variables. Independent variables can be continuous or categorical (dummy code, as appropriate). Regarding the dependent and independent variables, we choose the following that we consider relevant: Independent variable: size of the board, size of the audit committee, dependent variable: remuneration of corporate debt; Independent variable: company value, shareholder rights, dependent variable: corporate performance; Independent variable: corporate governance, dependent variable: investment decision; Independent variable: shareholder structure, dependent variable: financial reports, system efficiency. In summary, the main research question will be the following: Q1 - Depending on the independent variables, is it possible to define a corporate governance index?