Corporate Governance and Risk Disclosures: A Comparative Analysis Between Bangladeshi and Malaysian Islamic Banks

Abstract

Corporate governance provides a fundamental framework to oversee corporate conduct and ensures transparency of institutions like banks. In case of Islamic banks, it adds additional importance as the profit sharing (with the depositors) system enhances the chance of agency problem for such institutions. Again, risks are inherent in institutions like Islamic banks, which necessitate the investors to get proper information about the risk encountered by the banks in which they invest. Thus, corporate governance and risk disclosures bear utmost importance. Since Malaysian banking industry has already experienced a favorable growth of Islamic banking and Bangladesh is observing a rapid growth of popularity of Islamic banking, a comparative study has been undertaken between Malaysian and Bangladeshi Islamic banks regarding corporate governance and risk disclosures in annual reports. Content analysis technique has been applied to facilitate the comparison. Both quantity and quality of risk reporting of the sample companies have been evaluated. A corporate governance disclosure index has been developed by following the guidelines provided by Bangladesh Security and Exchange Commission (BSEC) and the principles laid down in the ‘Guidelines on Corporate Governance for Licensed Islamic Banks in Malaysia’ to explore and compare the degree of good corporate governance and relevant disclosures in the annual reports. It is hypothesized that corporate governance and risk disclosure will vary between Malaysian and Bangladeshi Islamic Banks. It is also argued that the corporate risk disclosures will be positively associated with the quality of the firm’s corporate governance mechanisms. Results are generally supportive of hypotheses. At the end, implications for theory and practices are discussed in the study.