ABSTRACT

Can be verified, according to Brazilian Cooperative Organization-OCB (2012), the number of credit unions in Brazil in 2011 was 1,370 and the number of cooperative 5.1 million, approximately 3% of the population, with a share of only 1.7% total assets of the financial system (Central Bank, 2012). Small numbers compared to other countries. The Central Bank of Brazil- Bacen- regulates the operations of credit unions and encourages best practices in governance for the system, depending on the need to maintain the efficiency of these organizations, and indicates the separation between the management and ownership as cooperatives and professional practice required.

This study aims to analyze how the main corporate governance practices in cooperatives is correlated with variables characterizing size and scale of financial cooperatives and in particular the variable division between ownership and management. For this purpose, we used data from the Corporate Governance Project of the Central Bank, Bacen (2009) and due to the large number of variables, was conducted a factorial multivariate analysis by principal components. The results, after the extraction of three factors show that the separation of ownership and management is negatively correlated with the variables of governance characteristics of traditional management in cooperatives, and positively with other variables that represent the best practices set of governance. But doesn’t presents correlate with economic and financial size, which implies a new research question, if the division between ownership and management is important for the business efficiency of the Brazilian credit cooperatives or social organizations like these have a different logic corporate governance also efficient.

Keywords: corporate governance, credit union, separating ownership and management