Nobody perhaps thought of the corporate excesses that are and have been taking place in a continued manner and
has made the corporate executives at home and abroad as “least-trusted people” (Murthy: 2004). Because of this,
the corporates emphasise on governance mechanism to re-establish their trustworthiness by assuming a role that
can nurture a revolution in socio-economic transformation of the society. Good Governance can be a catalyst in
improving the firm performance. Even the Prime Minister of India, Shri Narendra Modi, emphasized that less government
(control), more governance is the need of the hour”. Corporate governance stands for commitment to well-being and
progress of all stakeholders. Companies that have followed the principles of corporate governance have consistently
earned high returns, increased their net worth and enhanced their shareholders’ wealth, dealt ethically with customers,
government and business partners and maintained and updated their professional management culture, system
and process, and accomplished excellence.
The need to intensify the corporate governance mechanism in Indian corporates triggers this study to determine the
ascendancy of corporate board attributes on firm performance. The study used financial and governance related
disclosure from the annual reports of 36 randomly selected pharmaceutical companies in India for the financial year
2015-16. Correlation and regression analysis performed to measure the influence of board attributes i.e. board size,
board independency, promoter and director shareholding, multiple directorship, chairman and CEO duality, female
representative on corporate boards on firm performance. The results revealed that board size, promoter and directors
shareholding, chairman and CEO duality and female representatives in corporate boards significantly influence the
firm performance.

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