The board
characteristics are one of the mechanisms in enhancing corporate governance. These
characteristics are also considered as major corporate controls. Malaysian Code
of Corporate Governance (MCCG) acts as a guideline for the public listed
companies to follow even though the recommendations were not necessary to be
complied. Prior studies provide mixed result on the relationship between board
characteristics and firm’s capital structure. Thus, the aim of this study is to
examine the influences of board characteristics on the capital structure of
selected Malaysian public listed companies. In this study, board
characteristics are comprised of board leadership structure, board committee,
board size, board meeting and board composition. Data were collected within a
period of past 5 years from 2012 to 2016 with a total sample data of 175 that
was taken from companies’ annual report. The level of capital structure was
measured using debt ratio since most of the prior researchers used debt ratio
to determine the relationship between board characteristics and firm’s capital
structure. Multicollinearity regression test was used to test the relationship
of both variables. The result showed that board committee and board composition
has a significant and positive relationship with firm’s capital structure. On
the other hand, board leadership and board size are negatively related to the
firm’s capital structure. Board meeting is also not significantly related with
firm’s leverage. Overall, this study indicates that board characteristics has
no significant effect on the firm’s capital structure as there are also other
factors that plays an important roles in affecting the firm’s capital structure
