Does the appearance of women at the executive position in the boardroom make any differences in firm performance, especially in the financial sector which is well-known to be a male dominated sector? Inspired by that question, our study aims to explore the influence of female leadership in firm performance. We investigate this relationship from a comprehensive dataset comprising of 310 listed financial institutions from 21 Western European countries. The endogeneity concerns were removed using a Two stage approach least square (2SLS) and Generalized method of moments (GMM). Critically, we demonstrated that women's appearance at alternative managerial levels, including the chairperson, executive, and total female directors in the boardroom, negatively influences both firm accounting and market-based performance. We further explore that the percentage of women in the boardroom (excepting non-executive female directors) has a negative impact on performance only in low-performing firms. Our findings argue with previous studies which encouraged more involvement of women at higher managerial levels. We believe that women's unique characteristics are addressed to alleviate interest behavior, but they tend to reduce the performance of financial firms.

This paper shows the feasibility that a natural catastrophe insurance fund (NCIF) may achieve financial self‐sufficiency via three bailout programmes, including pre‐funding, loan‐financing and equity‐financing, to support the insurers during the bad years. Under such programmes, different accounting procedures for the insurers and NCIF are developed to simulate their 30‐year cash flows based on the best‐fitting loss model calibrated by the global insured loss data. The numerical analysis results indicate that the proposed programmes can balance the financial revenue and expenditure of NCIF in the long term, and this conclusion implies the authority can develop similar schemes as NCIF to smooth the peak risk of natural catastrophes.

Purpose Corporate governance plays a critical role in solving agency problems. However, previous findings on how governance mechanisms lead to high firm performance are inconclusive. Additionally, this relationship has not been well addressed in the context of transitional countries where governance systems and mechanisms are weak, leaving a gap for research. Hence, this study aims to shed light on the effects of four key governance components, namely, ownership concentration, chief executive officer duality, board size and gender diversity, on firm performance. Design/methodology/approach This study reports on the econometric panel data analysis and fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) of 1,424 firm-year observations from listed companies in Vietnam covering the period of 2010–2017. Findings The econometric panel data analysis confirmed the net effects of single solitary governance components. FsQCA revealed equifinal configurations of components that explain high firm market- and accounting-based performance. Practical implications These findings are relevant for firms in transitional and emerging markets, aiming to adopt the most suitable internal mechanisms to pursue their performance objectives and for regulators interested in enhancing the advantages of the capital market. Originality/value This study provides empirical evidence that firm performance can be improved when the appropriate corporate governance mechanisms are selected. As there are equifinal paths leading to the desired outcome of high performance, firms from different industrial and national contexts should mindfully apply any uniform corporate governance code.

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