ESG_C is the company’s exposure to environmental, social and governance controversies and negative events reflected in global media (0–100%); NCInd is the percentage of independent directors serving on the bank’s nomination committee at the fiscal year end; NCSustis the joint membership of NC members of the sustainability/CSR committee; NCAge is average age of nomination committee members; NCNation is a dummy variable equal to 1 if at least one nomination committee member has a different nationality from the bank and 0 otherwise; NCWoman_Ch is a dummy variable equal to 1 if the chair of the nomination committee is a woman and 0 otherwise; Boardgender is the percentage of female on the board; Boardsize is the number of members who belong to the board of directors of the bank; Banksizeis the natural logarithm of the total assets for banking size; ROA represents the profitability; CINC is the efficiency ratio; and TIER is the percentage of risk-weighted assets on a fully loaded basis as reported by the bank. ECSent is a composite indicator produced by the Directorate General for Economic and Financial Affairs (DG ECFIN) of the European Commission (https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/teibs010/default/table?lang=en#:∼:text=The%20economic%20sentiment%20indicator%20(ESI,EU%20and%20euro%20area%20levels).