Haitham Nobanee & Noura Ahmed Al-Suwaidi
This paper aims to explore several issues related to the financial performance of the listed companies in the UAE financial market. Agency theory and legitimacy theory were studied in which four criteria were extracted (corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, sustainability, and leadership). These criteria were then analyzed using the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) powerful mechanisms using information collected by a developed questionnaire that compares and sets priority between each element in the designed AHP model. The finding of our study shows the importance of corporate governance in improving the overall financial performance of the listed companies in the UAE. With the least emphasis on the outcome based leadership. This paper makes several important contributions to literature. First, it is an answer to the most recent calls from experts in the MENA region regarding the new trends faced in the financial market. Second, the present paper provides an examination of the performance of the big listed companies in the UAE Financial Market to reach a possible alternative that will lower the level of fluctuation in the stock exchange, which is considered among the first initiatives in the field. Third, this paper will provide a new insight to authority, as it will identify some gaps in the corporate practices and compliance in relation with different financial auditing, which will help not only in mitigating risks but also in improving the listed companies performance over the long run. Finally, the entire framework is new and has not been identified in previous literature.