Hamidreza Taherian - Master of Business Management (Financial Management), Islamic Azad University, South Tehran Branch, Tehran, Iran
Abdolhosein Karampour - Professor of Business Management - Assistant Professor and faculty member of Malek Ashtar University, Department of Management, Faculty of Humanities, South Tehran Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran

The purpose of the present paper is that of researching the impact of corporate governance on financial performance, on a sample of 3 companies (Tamin Petroleum & Petrochemical Investment Co., Persian Gulf Petrochemical Industries Company and Parsian Oil and Gas Development Group), mainly from the chemical industry area, listed at Tehran Stock Exchange index, during the period 2011-2016. In this study the return on assets (ROA) is the proxy of financial performance. As variables for the corporate governance there have been considered: the characteristics of the board of directors (independence, salary, size, tenure, age and Risk Committees); firm size; the shareholder structure (the shares of institutional investors); the characteristics of CEO (duality) . The estimation techniques used in the empirical analysis have been multivariate regression models based on the method of econometric data based on the relationship between independent and dependent variables using software Eviews8. The results show that the percentage of institutional investors, the salary Board of Directors, the Risk Committee of the Board of Directors and the Board of Directors size have a positive and significant effect on the financial performance of companies listed on Tehran Stock Exchange chemicals industry.

Corporate Governance, Financial Performance, Board of directors’ Characteristics, panel data