The Effect of CEO Characteristics on Firm Performance of Food and Beverage Companies in Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore

This study aims to investigate the effect of CEO characteristics [used five surrogate indicators: 1) CEO gender, 2) CEO tenure, 3) CEO age 4) CEO education and 5) CEO nationality] on firm performance (applied four measures: 1) Return On Asset (ROA), 2) Return On Equity (ROE), 3) Return On Sales (ROS) and 4) Tobin's Q] in the context of food and beverage firms in Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore. The sample was screened from 50 food and beverage firms consisting of 16 Indonesian firms, 19 Malaysian firms and 15 Singapore firms. The period of observation ranged from 2013 to 2018. This study uses panel data regression analysis, including the fixed effect model (FEM) with clustered standard errors. The empirical results showed that CEO gender has a significant effect on firm performance measured with Tobin's Q. Meanwhile, CEO gender does not have a significant effect to firm performance measured with ROA, ROE, and ROS. Furthermore, CEO nationality has a significant effect on firm performance measured with ROA and Tobin's Q but not significant measured with ROE and ROS. However, CEO tenure, CEO age and CEO education does not have significant effect on firm performance from the 5 indicator. At the end, from the robustness tests confirmed that CEO education is not significantly affect firm performance (all measures), and CEO nationality is significantly affect Tobin's Q in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore in the main regressions.