Abstract

Based on the Corporate Governance Report (CGR) of Thai listed companies 2014, published by the Thai Institute of Directors Association (Thai IOD) in collaboration with the Stock Exchange of Thailand (SET) and the Office of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), this paper investigates the determinant characteristics of the Thai listed companies. Our research question is to see the financial characteristics of those Thai listed firms all of which are ranked according to their corporate governance performance. Two groups of company’s corporate governance were classified; high rank and low rank corporate governance (CG) levels. Eight efficient CG determinants are taken into our study. The statistical analyses - t-test analysis and chi-square- are used in this study. Our result provides evidence that seven determinants (ownership structure, board size, proportion of firm’s equity, proportion of independent committee, firm size, board size range, and type of audit firm) out of eight illustrated the statistical significance between the two groups. Only ‘dual CEO’, as refers to the same person between the CEO and owners, is the only one determinant that did not illustrate statistical differences.  These seven determinants are crucial to distinguish between good governance of high and low rank levels. To interpret this result, either the company appoints the owner or major shareholder to become a CEO or else does not influence the quality of the CG ranking of such company. Further research requires for in-depth investigations on those seven determinants.