Corporate boards, large blockholders and executive compensation in banks: Evidence from Poland

The paper aims to investigate the impact of uniform board governance standards on the level of executive pay in banks with a controlling shareholder. Based on the sample of a hand-collected data on all executive pay of all public banks in Poland from 2005 to 2013, we find that board independence is negatively associated with executive compensation. In contrast to widely-held banks, independent directors in banks controlled by a blockholder provide restraint on the tendency to overcompensate. Thus, in concentrated ownership structure managerial power theory prevails over agency theory. However, the effect might be diluted as the number of board members increases. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.