CORPORATE GOVERNANCE AND FIRM PERFORMANCE IN SLOVAKIA

Globalization appears in many spheres of our lives and is one of the key expressions of contemporary international business. Developing international cooperation, linking economies and emerging multinationals enables businesses to increase their efficiency and performance, and to increase return on investment for investors. Investing in the international space has the need to ensure that corporate management takes its decisions in the interest of business owners. Scandals of the recent past have highlighted the need for a uniform adjustment of corporate governance principles and their constant updating. Corporate governance principles help evaluate and improve the legal, regulatory and institutional framework for corporate governance to promote economic efficiency, sustainable growth, and financial stability of businesses. They help align ownership goals with management decisions, regulate management processes, and thereby ensure that business owners' goals are met, such as achieving the required return on invested resources and long-term growth in the value of the corporate assets. In our contribution, we examine the issue of corporate governance in terms of agency theory. We examine the relationship between corporate governance and firm performance. We are interested in how the selected determinants of corporate governance affect the performance of the corporate, measured by profitability indicators. We will examine the issue on the sample of companies admitted to the regulated market in the Slovak Republic.