Profitability and Stability of GCC Islamic Banks

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of corporate governance on profitability and stability of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) banking sector using panel data for Islamic banks over the period from 2003 to 2018. We estimate equations employing the pooled ordinary least square (OLS), the panel generalized least square (GLS) random effect (RE), the two-step system generalized method of moments (GMM), and the robust estimation approach to control for heterogeneity, endogeneity and outliers in the data. We find clear evidence that bank corporate governance matters in explaining the financial performance of Islamic GCC banks. We find a positive association between Shari’ah board and bank profitability and stability. We also find that board size loads positively on Z-score and negatively on bank profitability. The evidence also shows that CEO power has a negative impact on profitability and stability. However, board independence and shareholders independence do not exhibit a significant effect on both bank profitability and stability. These findings have implications for the authorities to establish several regulations related to Islamic finance in order to enhance the performance and soundness of Islamic banking industry as well as the stability of the whole financial system in the GCC region.