Board of Director Configurations in Mutual Fund Sponsors: Early Evidence of Board-Level Performance

We examine the relationship between how mutual fund sponsors configure their board(s) of directors and the performance of the funds under a particular board's purview. Fund sponsors utilize either one board to oversee all the funds within a fund family or multiple boards that oversee one fund or a subset of the family's funds. Our results suggest that fund families – that is, sponsors – that use multiple boards have significantly higher objective-adjusted board-level weighted excess returns. But, there are no significant differences in the objective-adjusted board-level weighted excess expenses. These results are consistent with the argument that multiple boards provide superior monitoring.