Legal astuteness of executive directors and firm transparency in offshore economies
Legal astuteness of executive directors and firm transparency in offshore economies
The importance associated with lawyers as directors has largely been overlooked and is understudied in the literature. The few studies there are largely restricted to considering lawyers as nonexecutive directors and typically adopt a singular deterministic institutional approach. We depart from these prior studies in adopting a theoretical model which integrates the resource-based view with its institutional counterpart and in focussing on lawyers as executive directors with operational and strategic decision making capacity. The focus of our study is on the legally dynamic and innovative offshore jurisdictional frameworks of the Caribbean which hosts the largest concentration of the biggest offshore financial centres in the world. Our findings reveal that higher proportions of lawyer-executive directors are associated with increased firm transparency in financial reporting. This is further positively moderated when jurisdictions have higher financial secrecy and seemingly paradoxically higher institutional quality. Our results yield important implications for offshore finance and associated corporate governance.
Hearn, Bruce
45dccea3-9631-4e5e-914c-385896674dc2
18 October 2025
Hearn, Bruce
45dccea3-9631-4e5e-914c-385896674dc2
Hearn, Bruce
(2025)
Legal astuteness of executive directors and firm transparency in offshore economies.
International Corporate Governance Society [ICGS] annual conference 2025, AMBS, Manchester, UK, Manchester, United Kingdom.
18 - 19 Oct 2025.
44 pp
.
Record type:
Conference or Workshop Item
(Paper)
Abstract
The importance associated with lawyers as directors has largely been overlooked and is understudied in the literature. The few studies there are largely restricted to considering lawyers as nonexecutive directors and typically adopt a singular deterministic institutional approach. We depart from these prior studies in adopting a theoretical model which integrates the resource-based view with its institutional counterpart and in focussing on lawyers as executive directors with operational and strategic decision making capacity. The focus of our study is on the legally dynamic and innovative offshore jurisdictional frameworks of the Caribbean which hosts the largest concentration of the biggest offshore financial centres in the world. Our findings reveal that higher proportions of lawyer-executive directors are associated with increased firm transparency in financial reporting. This is further positively moderated when jurisdictions have higher financial secrecy and seemingly paradoxically higher institutional quality. Our results yield important implications for offshore finance and associated corporate governance.
Text
Caribbean Lawyers ICGS paper 2
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Published date: 18 October 2025
Venue - Dates:
International Corporate Governance Society [ICGS] annual conference 2025, AMBS, Manchester, UK, Manchester, United Kingdom, 2025-10-18 - 2025-10-19
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Local EPrints ID: 510389
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/510389
PURE UUID: fea248a8-5c27-408e-a642-16cd89d6d109
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Date deposited: 30 Mar 2026 16:37
Last modified: 31 Mar 2026 01:57
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