Poor Corporate Governance, Market Discipline and Cronyism in the 1997 Asian Crisis

Corporate governance refers to the rules of the game that enables stakeholders to exercise appropriate oversight of a company to maximize its value and profits. Both financial and corporate governance restructuring is an ongoing reform program in the post Asian crisis-ridden countries. To be fully effective, corporate restructuring must be linked to bank restructuring, which, in turn, must be linked to the settlement of external debts to scale down the systemic risks. Fundamental changes within the economy are necessary to create arm’s-length relations between the government, corporations, and banks. Many corporations in the crisisridden countries are over-indebted and frequently are part of conglomerates or monopolies that are controlled by small groups: they have non-transparent accounting and close links to government and financial institutions, including commercial banks (Iskander et al., 1999).