South East Asian Corporate Board Size

There is few papers that analyse South East Asian firm board size and this paper adds to this literature; focusing on the larger listed firms in Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand. While it is apparent that large firms have large boards there is also more subtle cross-country variation concerning the impact of leverage and profitability on board size. Finally, there is evidence of decreases in average board size for firms in Hong Kong and Singapore over the sample period, 1999 to 2002, with increases in average board size evident for Indonesian and Malaysian firms over the same period.