Board characteristics are gradually being recognized as a significant element of
company value. Thus, information on board characteristics is important in decision
making both within the company and for external stakeholders. The purpose of this
study is to determine the relationship between board characteristics which are gender
diversity, board independence, and CEO duality towards company performances in
Malaysian Public Listed Companies. A total of 210 observation samples from 70
companies were used as samples of the study. This study used the secondary data that
were extracted from the annual reports of the companies from 2017 until 2019. The
relationship of the board characteristics components was calculated by using the
number of female directors divided by total directors in the board, board independence
was calculated through the number of independent directors that divided by the total
number of directors, and for the CEO duality, dummy variable has been applied while
the company performances were measured based on its profitability value which was
the return on assets (ROA). The results indicated that the company performances of
Public Listed Companies in Main Market were influenced by the proper management
of board characteristics. Hence, the outcome revealed that there is no relationship
between gender diversity and no relationship between CEO duality towards the
company performances of Public Listed Companies while the presence of board
independence has a relationship with the company performances. The outcome of this
study also revealed that board independence has the strongest impact on the company
performances in Malaysian Public Listed Companies.
