Le management des filiales bancaires étrangères en Afrique à l’épreuve de la culture locale : l’influence des directeurs adjoints autochtones

Credit Risk Control at Cameroonian Banks’ Board of Directors: The Problems of the Presence of Directors Representing the State and the Nationality of Chairman

“…There is nonetheless few works examining the behaviour of directors, in relation to the activity of controlling credit risk, in foreign banking subsidiaries. Our work is based on a recent study on this theme (Tioumagneng, 2018). The said study suggests that a chairman of the board of directors (CBD) of foreign nationality, more precisely an expatriate from a Western country, would be against taking credit risk in such subsidiaries in Africa.…”

“…Nevertheless, in this article, a different approach is used to analyse the problem related to the characteristics of the directors. This problem is apprehended in the light of recent works developed in the field of international management that invites to take into account the origin or nationality of the chairman of the board (Tioumagneng, 2018). The theory is that when he is an expatriate, for example, he may have problems with information asymmetry inherent in cultural adaptation difficulties in the host country.…”

“…There are studies that point out that this type of shareholding was used for a long time in African countries to promote indigenous people, usually state agents or civil servants, both to the governing bodies and to the directors of the banks. (Tioumagneng, 2018). Beyond this, the article takes into account the theory that the presence of expatriate executives helps reduce the bank credit risk, especially in a foreign subsidiary bank in the host country, given the ethnocentric control exercised by headquarters (Berger et al, 2005).…”

“…The experimental area is Cameroon, a country in Central Africa. The characterisation of the local banking sector is not considered in the present article, given the existence of various sufficiently enlightening previous research on the subject (IMF, 2006; Tioumagneng, 2018; Wamba & Djine, 2002). All 12 banks in the sample are currently identified, for reasons of anonymity, by the acronyms Bq1, Bq2, Bq3, Bq4, Bq5, Bq6, Bq7, Bq8, Bq9, Bq10, Bq11 and Bq12.…”

“…It allows bouncing back on the existence, within our context of study, domestic banks, bank subsidiaries of Western multinationals and subsidiaries of so-called pan-African banks. This study contributes to the deepening of rare researches that questions the behaviour of the directors of these three types of banks in terms of controlling credit risk (Tioumagneng, 2018). In banks, the focus is on the body where policy, philosophy and strategic control of managerial decisions are developed on the type of risk considered.…”