Gender Wise Saudi Investors' Awareness of Corporate Governance Mechanism and Its Importance in Their Investment Decision Making – An Empirical Study

Abstract

This paper discusses the gender wise investors' awareness of corporate governance concepts and its importance in their investment decision process. It also answers the two questions "do investors depend on information related to corporate governance to make their investment decisions?" and "are the mechanisms of corporate governance important to them?" Books, studies, and research articles are used to enrich this paper. A survey is used as a tool to investigate the opinion of male and female investors, about corporate governance concepts and its importance on investors' decision making process. The survey shows that investors do not have a clear definition of corporate governance but they believe that it is important from companies' point of view. Also, most of investors do not always depend on information or factors that related to corporate governance as a base for their investment decisions. Mainly, Saudi investors care about board committees, disclosure and transparency as mechanisms of corporate governance.