We examine the impact of top managers on performance and idiosyncratic risk of the sharia‐compliant firms in the UK and Pakistan by constructing a manager–firm matched panel data and then tracking the role of individual top managers across different firms. The results regarding the individual effects on performance by a particular firm show that there exists a significant difference for managers who move from a non‐sharia to a sharia‐compliant firm. However, this difference is not significant for managers who move from a sharia‐compliant firm to another sharia firm. Policy implications of the findings are discussed.