Does Board Characteristics Affects Corporate Financial Leverage? Evidence from Non-Financial Companies Listed in Colombo Stock Exchange

With the recent developments in the discipline of corporate governance, concern for the Board of Directors has increased significantly. Even though there are a number of extensive researches in the field, the understanding of the board and its impacts on corporate Financial Leverage is still limited. This research investigated the linkage between some corporate governance characteristics and corporate Financial Leverage in an emerging market, Sri Lanka. The researchers have used a sample of 100 non – financial highly market capitalized firms selected from the most active trading listed Companies in Colombo Stock Exchange (CSE) covering the period from 2011 to 2019 with 900 observations. The Fixed effect multiple regression models (OLS) have used to analyze the data. Results show that proportionate of board non-executive directors and independent directors positively significantly affect the corporate financial leverage and CEO Duality and Board tenure have negatively significantly affected the corporate financial leverage.