Corporate law and governance: A case of Tunisia after the Arab Spring

Abstract

This paper reviews the corporate governance practices of listed Tunisian companies. Besides that, the paper explores the evolution of corporate governance legislation between 2013 and 2017 in order to identify the changes caused by the revolution to accompany the current context’s needs and the democratic transition in Tunisia. Although the most of companies in Tunisia are dominated by family small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and very small enterprises (VSEs) we have chosen to focus on listed companies. These companies present more advanced practices of corporate governance given the legislation in force. Results of this paper shed light on several important features of the Tunisian corporate governance system, for example, interlocking directorates. It is interesting to notice that a limited number of directors control the majority of the market capitalization in Tunisia. The practice of interlocking directorates reflects the Tunisian way of economic lobbying. As for gender diversity, although there are no laws imposing a minimum quota of women directors, the proportion of female board members has slightly increased during the last years, moving from 7.87% in 2013 to 9.92% in 2017. In contrast to Arab and African countries, it should be noted that the majority of women directors sit on boards as members of the family controlling the company or because they are civil servants representing the state’s interests in state-owned enterprises