CAPITAL STRUCTURE AND FINANCIAL PERFORMANCE OF DEPOSIT MONEY BANKS IN NIGERIA

This study was conducted to examine the effect capital structure has on the financial performance of money deposit banks in Nigeria. The population of the study constituted the fourteen listed money deposit banks on the Nigeria Exchange Group. The convenience sampling method was used to select the entire population as sample size of the study, Data were collected from the published annual reports of the banks available in their official websites for a period of 2016 to 2022 (7 years). Data collected were analyzed using descriptive statistics and panel data regression analysis. The results of the estimations revealed that asset tangibility has sig ficant negative effect on financial performance, leverage had significant negative effect on the financial performance, while firm size had a positive insignificant effect. The study concluded that firm size has a significant influence in determining financial performance among listed deposit money banks in Nigeria. The study recommended that the management of deposit money banks should employ an optimal debt financing means that can improve the financial performance of deposit money banks and enhance their value for the benefits of its shareholders. In addition, the management of these firms as well as policy makers should be more motivated to discovering ways to obtain the optimal utilization of their assets while making the best use of their resources during the process of delivering their services as it would go a long way in improving their performance.