Research Journal of Finance and Accounting www.iiste.org ISSN 2222-1697 (Paper) ISSN 2222-2847 (Online) Vol.6, No.10, 2015 27 The Impact of Corporate Governance Application on Financial Performance of the New Ventures Jordanian Companies Shamsi S. Bawaneh Department of Accounting, King Talal Faculty of Business and Technology, Princess Sumaya University for Technology, P.O. Box 1438 Al Jubaiha 11941 Jordan Email: s.bawaneh@psut.edu.jo Shahed Badran Email: shahed.badran@students.psut.edu.jo Abstract This Study aims to investigate the impact of the application of Corporate Governance (CG) rules on the performance of Jordanian listed companies that consider new ventures by analyzing their annual reports for the year 2013 produced by targeted companies or provided by Amman Stock Exchange (ASE). To achieve the objectives of the study, this research adopted a survey to find the extent of application of the rules of CG guidelines issued by the Amman Securities Commission (ASC) as an indicator to measure the application of CG rules. The findings of this study indicate a strong commitment to CG and all targeted companies disclosed information about the Board of Directors of a shareholding company. In regards to General Assembly meeting, a moderate commitment was indicated. Furthermore, the results of this study indicate a weak application for CG relate to the Shareholders' Rights (lowest among all investigated rules), and the commitment to issues related to Transparency and disclosure is still weak. Finally, the results show that no associations are exist between the company`s performance “ROA, ROE and EPS” and the reporting of the company CG application. Keywords: Corporate Governance; Governance Practices; Corporate Governance Index; Financial Performance; New Ventures; Jordan. 1. Introduction Corporate governance is more broadly defined as a set of relationships between a company’s management, its board, its shareholders and other stakeholders. It is an instrument to obtain business collectivity and transparency and to promote economic growth. It especially protects investors due to well-functioning financial markets. With the globalization, mobilization of capital, and integration of financial markets forced countries for effective corporate governance standards (Buiten, 2012). Much attention has been dedicated by researchers, in the last two decades, to study Corporate Governance among corporations. Most of the studies were conducted in developed countries with only a few being undertaken in developing countries (Bawaneh, 2011) and no studies conducted in Jordanian new ventures. Academics and business managers have noticed how corporate governance has been transformed from an irrelevant and doubtful idea to a high-ranking topic on research agendas (Rosamaria and Robert, 2011). Corporate Governance has been the subject of research interest in the social sciences since the mid-1900s (Christofi et al., 2012). Recently, the concept of corporate governance became more significant and controversial, due to accounts of fraud, accounting scandals, inside trading, excessive compensation, and other failures of the governance, particularly in the developed countries (Benea, 2012). Corporate failures prompted interest in the link between corporate governance and firm performance. The relation between corporate governance and firm performance has been the subject for many extensive studies in the last decade (Buiten, 2012). In the last decade, considerable efforts have been given by public and private bodies to the corporate governance issues in Jordan. This research examines the extent to which do business entities in Jordan engage in corporate governance issues on the national level. To come into that end, the current study investigates the level of adopting and implementing the CG practices by the Jordanian public shareholding companies that consider being new ventures through examining the CG reported information within their annual reports and the information provided by ASE. In addition to this introduction, the flow of this paper is divided into several parts as follows: the research problem, the research questions; an overview of CG reporting and rules; previous literature on CG application; methodology and method which also describes the data collection process; the descriptive analysis results; and finally results of the analytical statistics along with conclusion and recommendations. 1.1 The Research Problem The deterioration of Business organizations asset portfolios largely due to distorted credit management was one of the main structural sources of the world’s financial crisis (Fries et al., 2002). To a large extent, this problem was the result of poor and lack corporate governance codes in many countries and mainly in banking institutions