Australian CEO Outside Directorships

Abstract

In a study of the outside directorships held by CEOs in large Australian companies we find that CEO outside directorships are a function of CEO power and the level of outside directorships held by other members of the board. They are also increasing in CEO relative tenure, CEO duality and board size. Whether the outside directorship is for a private or a public company is also found to have an impact on the results. The outside directorship counts are manually collected from the annual reports of the top 100 listed Australian companies, sampled every three years over the period from 1990 through to 2008.

Keywords: outside directorships, busy CEO

JEL Classification: G34, G32