Corporate Governance in Practice. The Greek Case

This study investigates the characteristics of corporate governance in Greece today as illustrated through a thorough analysis of the Corporate Governance Statements of all public companies in the Athens Stock Exchange. We attempt to highlight various characteristics of the enforcement of corporate governance rules in the everyday practice of corporations. We identify idiosyncratic factors pertaining in the Greek market that present interesting features in the global context. On average firms comply with internationally accepted Corporate Governance Codes, as they have been adopted in Greece by the Hellenic Federation of Enterprises (SEV), even though the number of firms that gradually develop their own Corporate Governance Codes is increasing. Greek firms appear to have surprisingly low percentages of CEO – Chairman of Board duality phenomena. On the other hand, in relation with other corporate governance best practices, we find the relative absence of committees other than the Audit Committee, which is compulsory, while the majority of firms are directed by small Boards of fewer than eight members. On the negative side we also document low presence of women in Boards and a high percentage of main stock holder family members on companies’ Boards. When examining the distribution between executive and non-executive members in Boards it is found that the majority of Boards consist of executive and non-executive members, whereas independent non-executive members are constrained within the limits set by Greek corporate governance legislation. Our analysis further highlights that even though corporate governance implementation has been introduced to the local market for only approximately ten years, firms and authorities tend to be relatively strict relative to the level of conformity with internationally accepted corporate governance legislation.