Who’s in Charge?: The Board’s Role in Regional & Community Banks’ Financing Choices
(2025) BUSN79 20251Department of Business Administration
- Abstract
- Title: Who’s in Charge?: The Board’s Role in Regional & Community Banks’ Financing Choices
Seminar date: June 2nd, 2025
Course: BUSN79 - Degree Project in Accounting and Finance
Authors: Krystian Segura and Lazarin Lashkov
Supervisor: Reda Moursli
Key words: Board Independence, Board Age, Board Diversity, Capital Structure, Leverage, Regional and Community (R&C) Banking
Purpose: The aim of this paper is to explore the relationship between governance and capital structure decisions in U.S. regional and community banks. It examines whether factors such as board age, independence, and gender diversity influence leverage, thereby contributing to the broader discourse on governance in highly regulated environments and offering... (More) - Title: Who’s in Charge?: The Board’s Role in Regional & Community Banks’ Financing Choices
Seminar date: June 2nd, 2025
Course: BUSN79 - Degree Project in Accounting and Finance
Authors: Krystian Segura and Lazarin Lashkov
Supervisor: Reda Moursli
Key words: Board Independence, Board Age, Board Diversity, Capital Structure, Leverage, Regional and Community (R&C) Banking
Purpose: The aim of this paper is to explore the relationship between governance and capital structure decisions in U.S. regional and community banks. It examines whether factors such as board age, independence, and gender diversity influence leverage, thereby contributing to the broader discourse on governance in highly regulated environments and offering insights for policymakers, investors, and managers into how board composition shapes the financial strategy of institutions.
Methodology: The study employs panel data regression through a fixed effects model as the primary approach, allowing for control over unobserved heterogeneity across banks throughout the studied period.
Theoretical perspectives: The analysis is grounded in capital structure and governance theories such as Agency, Resource Dependence, and Trade-Off Theory, which collectively help explain the mechanisms through which board structure may affect financing choices.
Empirical foundation: The dataset comprises 1,122 firm-year observations from 187 publicly-listed regional and community banks operating in the United States over the 2018-2023 period.
Conclusions: This study finds that corporate governance attributes exhibit mixed relationships with capital structure choices among regional and community banks. Notably, while greater board independence and gender diversity are associated with reduced leverage, the insignificant effect of board age showcases a deviation from conventional corporate governance theory and suggests that the influence of governance on the establishment of financial policies may be context-dependent. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
http://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/record/9204353
- author
- Segura-Pekalski, Krystian Raúl LU and Lashkov, Lazarin LU
- supervisor
- organization
- course
- BUSN79 20251
- year
- 2025
- type
- H1 - Master's Degree (One Year)
- subject
- language
- English
- id
- 9204353
- date added to LUP
- 2025-06-26 14:28:18
- date last changed
- 2025-06-26 14:28:18
@misc{9204353,
abstract = {{Title: Who’s in Charge?: The Board’s Role in Regional & Community Banks’ Financing Choices
Seminar date: June 2nd, 2025
Course: BUSN79 - Degree Project in Accounting and Finance
Authors: Krystian Segura and Lazarin Lashkov
Supervisor: Reda Moursli
Key words: Board Independence, Board Age, Board Diversity, Capital Structure, Leverage, Regional and Community (R&C) Banking
Purpose: The aim of this paper is to explore the relationship between governance and capital structure decisions in U.S. regional and community banks. It examines whether factors such as board age, independence, and gender diversity influence leverage, thereby contributing to the broader discourse on governance in highly regulated environments and offering insights for policymakers, investors, and managers into how board composition shapes the financial strategy of institutions.
Methodology: The study employs panel data regression through a fixed effects model as the primary approach, allowing for control over unobserved heterogeneity across banks throughout the studied period.
Theoretical perspectives: The analysis is grounded in capital structure and governance theories such as Agency, Resource Dependence, and Trade-Off Theory, which collectively help explain the mechanisms through which board structure may affect financing choices.
Empirical foundation: The dataset comprises 1,122 firm-year observations from 187 publicly-listed regional and community banks operating in the United States over the 2018-2023 period.
Conclusions: This study finds that corporate governance attributes exhibit mixed relationships with capital structure choices among regional and community banks. Notably, while greater board independence and gender diversity are associated with reduced leverage, the insignificant effect of board age showcases a deviation from conventional corporate governance theory and suggests that the influence of governance on the establishment of financial policies may be context-dependent.}},
author = {{Segura-Pekalski, Krystian Raúl and Lashkov, Lazarin}},
language = {{eng}},
note = {{Student Paper}},
title = {{Who’s in Charge?: The Board’s Role in Regional & Community Banks’ Financing Choices}},
year = {{2025}},
}