Did good governance help in the banking crisis?

Yes, at least a bit. That's the conclusion of a study by a pair of academics in Finland, looking at the share price performance of 67 large, publicly traded US banks. The "bit" is the speed of recovery from the crisis. "Our empirical findings on the effects of corporate governance on bank performance are mixed," they acknowledge, in line with previous studies that showed ambiguous links between measures of corporate governance and various aspects for firm performance. "Although the results suggest that banks with stronger corporate governance mechanisms were associated with higher profitability in 2008, our findings also indicate that strong governance may have had negative effects on stock market valuations of banks amidst the crisis." Nevertheless, strong corporate governance practices were related to substantially higher stock returns in the aftermath of the market meltdown.

Source document: The working paper "Did Good Corporate Governance Improve Bank Performance During the Financial Crisis?" by Emilia Peni and Sami Vähämaa at the University of Vaasa in Finland, is a 30-page pdf file.