CEO DUALITY AND FIRM PERFORMANCE IN BRAZIL: EVIDENCE FROM 2008

Abstract

This research investigates the relationship between CEO duality and the performance of Brazilian firms in 2008. While CEO duality has been the dominant board leadership structure of US corporations, Brazilian firms typically separate the roles of CEO and chairperson. During 2008, some Brazilian firms such as Sadia S/A (a multinational food processing company) adopted a dual leadership structure in an attempt to respond to the global systemic crisis. Using agency and stewardship theory perspectives, we tested our hypotheses with data of Brazilian listed companies. The empirical results indicate that companies where the CEO and chairperson are the same person have significantly higher performance (ROE). We also found a positive association between CEO duality and all other firm performance measures (ROA, ROC, MTBV), although the results were not statistically significant for these