Impact of Corporate Board Characteristics on Financial Distress of Firms in India: A Sectoral Analysis.

Financial distress refers to the inability of firms to fulfill their debt obligations. This paper studies the impact of certain corporate governance measures or board characteristics on the probability of financial distress in various corporate sectors (manufacturing and non-manufacturing) in India. The higher the institutional ownership, the lower is the financial distress for the majority of the sectors, except telecom where firms having higher institutional ownership are found to be more financially distressed. Higher managerial ownership leads to less financial distress in the consumer and transport equipment sector. Measures like board size, number of board meetings, and commissioner's proportion are found to have a different impact on the probability of financial distress in diverse sectors. It has been observed that they have a positive influence on some sectors and a negative influence on others. So overall, a sectoral difference was observed in the impact of various board characteristics on the financial distress of firms in India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]