Assessing the Role of Macroeconomic Factors and Financial Structure in Performance of Iranian Private Banks Largani Mahmoud Samadi, Taleghani Mohammad, Janati Nastaran Department of Management & Accounting, Rasht branch, Islamic Azad University, Rasht, Iran Abstract Current study seeks for a plausible explanation of performance in the Iranian private banking industry in light of macroeconomic factors and financial structure of the banks. Hence, the research main question can be posed as whether “performance of the private Iranian banks is significantly associated to their financial structure and in a broader context to macroeconomic factors?” The macroeconomic factors of concern in this study are inflation rate (Inf), exchange rate (EX), and gross domestic product (GDP), financial structure of the banks is expressed in ratio of total debt to total asset (TDTA), and their performance is measured in terms of the profitability indicators Return On Assetss (ROA), Return On Equity (ROE), and net interest margin (NIM). To begin with, of the total population of the Iran's private banks whose shares have been actively traded on Tehran Stock Exchange (TSE) during 2007- 2011, 7 banks were selected as the sample subject to subsequent investigation. Significance of the hypotheses was verified using F-test the results of which confirmed significant relationship of financial structure and macroeconomic factor GDP with performance of the banks. However, the results did not indicate any significant association between inflation rate and bank performance. In addition, the results suggested a significant association between exchange rate (EX) and net interest margin (NIM). Top Keywords Financial structure, macroeconomic factors, bank performance. Top |