The purpose of this paper is to measure the impact of internal and external corporate governance mechanisms on the financial performance of banks in the under-researched Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) region during the COVID-19 pandemic period. Bank annual reports, the Orbis Bank Focus database, and World Bank reports were used to collect both financial and non-financial information on the banking sector, followed by fixed effects regressions and two-stage least squares. Results showed that the corporate governance measures of presence of independent members on the board of directors, high ownership concentration, lack of political pressure on board members, and strong legal protection, had positive effects on bank financial performance. Corporate governance mechanisms, such as performance-based compensation, the presence of women on boards, moderate size of the board, and anti-takeover mechanisms had no significant impact on bank performance during the crisis period. An effective internal and external corporate governance mechanism could improve the financial performance of banks in MENA countries in times of pandemics and crises.

This paper addresses the problem of forecasting daily stock trends. The key consideration is to predict whether a given stock will close on uptrend tomorrow with reference to today’s closing price. We propose a forecasting model that comprises a features selection model, based on the Genetic Algorithm (GA), and Random Forest (RF) classifier. In our study, we consider four international stock indices that follow the concept of distributed lag analysis. We adopted a genetic algorithm approach to select a set of helpful features among these lags’ indices. Subsequently, we employed the Random Forest classifier, to unveil hidden relationships between stock indices and a particular stock’s trend. We tested our model by using it to predict the trends of 15 stocks. Experiments showed that our forecasting model had 80% accuracy, significantly outperforming the dummy forecast. The S&P 500 was the most useful stock index, whereas the CAC40 was the least useful in the prediction of daily stock trends. This study provides evidence of the usefulness of employing international stock indices to predict stock trends.

Emotional intelligence is the ability to monitor one's own and others' thinking and actions. In this integrative review, the author seeks to determine the causes of the weak relationship between emotional intelligence and performance by positing that certain emotional competencies, rather than emotional intelligence, are the true predictors of performance. The author theorizes that emotional competencies (including self-control, resilience, social skills, conscientiousness, reliability, integrity, and motivation) interact with organizational climate and job demands or job autonomy to influence performance, as represented in the form of 5 empirically testable propositions. Self-control and emotional resilience are considered to delay the onset of a decline in performance from excessive job demands. Social skills, conscientiousness, reliability, and integrity assist to promote trust, which in turn may build cohesiveness among the members of work groups. Motivation may fuel job involvement in environments that promise psychological safety and psychological meaningfulness. A combination of superior social skills and conscientiousness may enhance the self-sacrifice of benevolent employees to heightened levels of dependability and consideration. Finally, emotional honesty, self-confidence, and emotional resilience can promote superior performance, if positive feedback is delivered in an informative manner, and can mitigate the adverse effects of negative feedback.

Presents a study which derives relationships between the personality/cultural variables of vertical and horizontal individualism and collectivism, on the one hand, and the organizational criteria of intrapreneurship and organizational commitment on the other. Suggests that horizontal individualism may explain intrapreneurship jointly with a supportive organizational climate. Vertical collectivism demonstrates a direct positive relationship with organizational commitment. Horizontal collectivism varies jointly with work‐group and supervisor commitments in a negative relationship with organizational commitment, indicating a perception of conflict between work‐group and supervisor goals on the one hand and organizational goals on the other. Concludes that, while the basis of the vertical collectivist’s commitment seems unclear, horizontal collectivists base their commitment on compliance or rewards. Discusses theoretical and a few practical implications.

Banks are financial intermediaries who transform deposits into loans. Banks in the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region use large deposits from oil companies and big businesses to finance trade, and fund government and private sector infrastructure projects. The role of banks in financing trade and development is significant as undeveloped capital markets are unable to perform this function. During the COVID-19 crisis, banks sustained liquidity shocks, as deposits were withdrawn to meet personal and business needs. Essentially, banks could not make loans, as the funds to make loans were depleted. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the effectiveness of liquidity creation as a main force, in conjunction with other performance predictors such as efficient asset management, asset quality, and bank size, on bank financial performance, either individually or in conjunction with liquidity creation during the COVID-19 financial crisis. We used bank financial data from a sample of 298 banks from 11 countries in the MENA region, including Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Jordan, and Israel, from 2020 to2021. Liquidity creation, efficient asset management, asset quality, and bank size increased bank return on assets and return on equity. Bank size and asset quality acted jointly with liquidity creation to increase return on assets and increase return on equity. We conclude that as liquidity creation acts individually, and in conjunction with asset quality and bank size to increase bank profits, both its main effect and its moderated effect, can maintain bank profitability, during periods of extreme liquidity supply shocks, such as the COVID-19 crisis.

The Lebanese banking sector has become risky due to political and economic crises. At such times, corporate governance mechanisms ensure objectivity of assessment and rationality in decision making. We examine the impact of internal corporate governance mechanisms on the performance of Lebanese banks, with political involvement in the administration and ownership of the banks. We used linear regression on a sample of 194 bank-year observations from 2016 to 2021. The presence of independent members on boards of directors, and ownership concentration due to family ownership, had positive effects on bank return on assets, return on equity, liquidity levels, and loans issued. Efficient control, along with the presence of audit, and compliance committees reduced risk by increasing capital adequacy and reducing non-performing loans. Both administrative political connections and ownership political connections increased return on assets, increased return on equity, increased liquidity levels, and increased loans to deposits, while increasing non-performing loans. Agency conflicts suggest that granting loans due to political pressure increased non-performing loans.