What is Independent Board Member

Several international and European regulatory and supervisory authorities, such as the Basel Committee for Banking Supervision, the European Banking Authority or the European Central Bank, are increasingly emphasizing that the structure of banks' managing bodies is a key driver of future financial stability and ask for reviews of existing skills, competencies, and expertise in order to cope with the newest economic, social, and technological challenges. The chapter subscribes to these views and aims at investigating two research directions: 1) whether there are resemblances in large, systemic banks' management board structure and 2) whether systemic banks' financial performance is determined by the management board's features (board size, number of women in the board, number of independent members). The empirical approach relies on several complementary methods (descriptive statistics, cluster analysis, panel regression) to reveal dominant board features in a sample of 29 European systemic banks, over a time frame of 11 years.