This study examines the impact of chief executive officers' (CEOs)' power on banks' risk-taking for publicly listed commercial banks in Vietnam from 2011 to 2021. Using generalized least square (GLS) random effect (RE) estimation, this study finds that the presence of powerful CEOs, with a large share of ownership and a role as the chairperson of the bank boards, reduce banks' risk-taking. Regarding other bank governance factors, a larger bank board results in lower bank risk-taking, while board independence, in contrast, is positively associated with bank risk. These results are robust to different proxies for banks' risk-taking and different estimation techniques.
Citation: Ngoc Anh Pham, Trang Quynh Ngo. CEO power and bank risk-taking: A revisit in an emerging market context[J]. Quantitative Finance and Economics, 2026, 10(1): 1-26. doi: 10.3934/QFE.2026001
This study examines the impact of chief executive officers' (CEOs)' power on banks' risk-taking for publicly listed commercial banks in Vietnam from 2011 to 2021. Using generalized least square (GLS) random effect (RE) estimation, this study finds that the presence of powerful CEOs, with a large share of ownership and a role as the chairperson of the bank boards, reduce banks' risk-taking. Regarding other bank governance factors, a larger bank board results in lower bank risk-taking, while board independence, in contrast, is positively associated with bank risk. These results are robust to different proxies for banks' risk-taking and different estimation techniques.
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