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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the link between board structure and performance of public companies in Russia – an emerging market with unique institutional background and a variability of corporate governance (CG) practices across its companies.

Panel data analysis was applied on a sample of 207 Russian companies that frequently traded in the Russian Trading System during the period 2007-2011, in order to test hypotheses on the relationships between board size, board independence, gender diversity, presence of board committees and financial performance, as measured by Tobin’s Q.

The results show a positive relationship between Tobin’s Q and the board’s gender diversity. The analysis demonstrates that smaller and bigger boards are associated with a greater Tobin’s Q value.

The findings provide additional evidence of how board structure is related to its effectiveness and corporate performance in countries with concentrated ownership, highly variable CG practices and a lack of proper implementation of corporate law and governance codes. The paper contributes to the existing empirical evidence on the advantages of small and large-sized boards and on gender diversity, and is the first investigating the relationship between Russian companies’ board committees and market-based performance. The results regarding board independence and committees suggest that these mechanisms are still not widely recognized for their role in CG and company performance in Russia.