The Minority investor protection and corporate governance practices

Evidence from West Africa regional stock exchange (BRVM)

Abstract

Developing countries tend to have weak institutional structures and contracting environments. More specifically, the concentration of ownership would be a response to weak investor protection (Klapper & Love, 2004; La Porta, Lopez-de-Silanes, Shleifer, & Vishny, 2000). However, in India, despite the improved degree of investors protection, share ownership remains concentrated (Altaf & Shah, 2018). This means that the concentration of share ownership is not always dictated by the level of investor protection. The objective of this paper is to determine the effect of minority investor protection on the corporate governance practices adopted by multinationals listed on the regional stock exchange. We used dynamic panel estimator to obtain significative results. The results show that when the protection of minority investors improves, the functions of Manager and chairman of the board of directors tend to be separated; the corporate governance tends towards a bicameral type of model, share ownership tends to be less concentrated, policies and remuneration standards are put in place and compensation of the Chairman and the members of the Board of Directors published in the annual reports and CSR practices and adherence to the code of ethics and norms tend to be a reality. The results of this study plead for policies consisting in improving the level of protection of the investors, especially the level of protection of the minority investors