Independent director has been viewed as one of the mechanisms that can help improve corporate governance system within an organization. The Malaysian Code on Corporate Governance (2012) and Bursa Malaysia Listing Requirements have specifically focusing on the importance for all companies to have appropriate number of independent directors on boards. The study seeks to determine the level of firms’ performance among Malaysian public listed companies with high number of independent director on board and to investigate the relationship between the characteristics of independent director (gender, age, educational level and attendance to board meeting) and firms’ performance, which is measured by return on asset (ROA).A sample of 200 companies from the total population of 812 public listed companies in the main market of Bursa Malaysia are selected according to the criteria set which are the companies with financial year end 31st December 2015 and have high number of independent directors on board. The data of this study is asses from annual reports of selected public companies which are obtained from the Bursa’s website. Mean and standard deviation, correlation analysis and multiple regression analysis are used to analysis the data collected. The findings of this study indicated that the level of firm performance among Malaysian public listed companies with high number of independent directors on board is at a low level. This result implies that having a high number of independent directors on board did not guarantee to improve the firms’ performance. Next, the finding of this study indicated that the characteristics of independent director such as gender, age and educational level of independent directors have no relationships with the firms’ performance. In contrast, attendance to board meeting appeared to be negatively and significant related with the firm performance. These result suggested that independent directors in Malaysian publicly listed companies make no or little contribution during board meeting resulted with no significant impact on firm performance. The results of this study may help the policy makers namely the government and Bursa Malaysia to develop a better policy in relation to the independent directors’ characteristics. Finally, in terms of practical standpoint, the nomination committee or company secretary should advice the board of directors in relation to the selection of a suitable person to be appointed and nominated as the independent directors to the board of companies.
