The issue of corporate governance has been a growing area of management research especially
among large and listed firms. Companies need financial resources to promote their objectives.
Therefore, factors may affect the capital structure of companies should be considered carefully.
The purpose of the present is to investigate whether there is any relationship between some
specific features of corporate governance and capital structure of listed manufacturing firms in
Colombo stock exchange. To do so 28 manufacturing companies were selected from those
which were listed in Colombo stock exchange during the period of 2009 until 2011 as the
sample of the study. The independent variables of the study included 'board size', 'board
structure' ‘board meeting ‘and 'proportion of independent non executive directors' while the
dependent variable was decided to be 'debt ratio' (as a criterion for capital structure). The
variables were empirically tested by multiple regression analysis. This found that corporate
governance practices have 34% impact on capital structure and among the corporate
governance variables board committee has a significant effect on firms’ capital structure.