Article Credit Risk Control at Cameroonian Banks’ Board of Directors: The Problems of the Presence of Directors Representing the State and the Nationality of Chairman André Tioumagneng 1 Rostand Yota 1 Abstract The evolution of fears related to possible crises reinforces the search of governance, guaranteeing the prudence of banks notably in developing countries. This article discusses the board of directors by proposing to explore the conditions under which it can master the control of bank credit risk. The mobilised conceptualisation pleads for a systemic vision of governance and rejects the relevance of evaluating in isolation the effectiveness of the board of directors. Data used are from a sample of 12 Cameroonian banks for the period 2006–2015. Results highlight that the presence of directors representing the state, unlike the existence of a chairman who is an expatriate, promotes the credit risk. The managerial implication of these results, for possible reforms, is the depoliticisation of the functioning of the board. Keywords Board of directors, bank, credit risk, governance, state Asia-Pacific Journal of Management Research and Innovation 14(3–4) 1–13 © 2019 Asia-Pacific Institute of Management SAGE Publications sagepub.in/home.nav DOI: 10.1177/2319510X18817973 http://journals.sagepub.com/home/abr 1 Université de Yaoundé II, Cameroon. Corresponding author: André Tioumagneng, Université de Yaoundé II, 18 Yaounde, Soa, Cameroon. E-mail: tioumagneng@yahoo.fr Over the last 30 years, there have been various financial crises marked by several bankruptcies (Lehman Brothers, Baring, Washington Mutual, etc.). The so-called subprime crisis of 2008 in the USA, the Asian crisis of 1997, the Mexican crisis of 1994 and that which occurred in Africa during the 1980s are well-known examples of these crises. The spectre of such crises seems to be confirmed. In parti- cular, there is the advent of a new crisis the consequences of which would be more dramatic than those of the 2008 crisis (De Gendt, 2016). According to De Gendt, numerous factors underpin the fear of a potential crisis. They include, among others, falling oil prices, economic decline in China, the general decline in bank interest rates and the existence of cross-border banks in Africa. The present article focuses on the bank credit risk whose recent statistics reveal an exponential progression throughout the world. In this regard, a study carried out by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in 2015 underlines that the stock of non-performing loans amounted to nearly a billion Euros in the European Union and represented the double of the amount registered in 2009. This risk is currently estimated at around 1 trillion Euros in the European Union. In Central Africa, the banking regulatory body, the Central African Banking Commission was created in 1990 when non-performing loans amounted to 532 million Euros. In 2016, 2015 and 2014, these loans are estimated at CFAF1250, CFAF894 and CFAF751 billion, respectively. Our article focuses on the resilient Cameroonian banking sector and also considers the increase in non-performing loans in recent years, according to the IMF deputy director in 2017. Discussions about past crises have their origin in the abnormal functioning of banks’ governance structures and in this case their board of directors (Jensen, 1993). Our investigations are in line with the recent research that, particularly in view of the observed upsurge in credit risk, examines the need to rethink or reform the governance of banks by emphasising on the selection criteria and the