Chief Executive Officer Characteristics and Financial Restatements in Malaysia

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) characteristics affect the occurrence of financial restatements in Malaysian firms. The CEO characteristics used in this study were tenure, honorific title, gender, expertise, and age. In addition, the financial restatement has been measured as a dummy variable as to whether companies restate their financial statements or not. The sample of this study comprised 442 companies listed in the main market of Bursa Malaysia during the period 2012–2016. The panel data method was utilised to analyse the data. This study employed a logistic regression analysis. The results of this study revealed that there is a positive and significant relationship between CEO tenure and CEO gender with financial restatements. In addition, this study found a negative and significant relationship between CEO honorific title and financial restatements. However, the results found insignificant relationships between CEO expertise and age with financial restatements. This study highlighted the importance of considering CEO characteristics as one of the influential determinants of financial restatements in Malaysian companies.