Abstract: Research on corporate governance is very thin on the role of owners on corporate performance, especially how risk-taking 

 orientation of owners comes to bear on decision making processes of the firm. The Board has been given inordinate attention in corporate governance literature, and yet a lot of corporate failures and malfeasance have occurred in spite of effective boards. This raises the question of whether the board alone is sufficient in corporate governance. The study therefore, investigated the combined effects of ownership structure and board effectiveness on performance of listed companies in Kenya using agency theory as an analytical framework. Ownership structure was operationalized in terms of ownership concentration and ownership identity, while elements of board effectiveness were leadership, stewardship, monitoring and reporting. Measures of performance were return on assets, return on equity and dividend yield. Using Pearson’s Product Moment Correlation, logistic regression and step-wise regression, the study found that ownership concentration and government ownership have significant negative relationships with firm performance. On the other hand, foreign ownership, diffuse ownership, corporation ownership, and manager ownership were found to have significant positive relationships with firm performance. The Board has no effect on firm performance.