Ownership Structure of Northeast Asian Countries

Ownership Structure of Northeast Asian Countries

1 In the first paper “Determinants of Corporate Ownership Structure and their effects on Corporate Governance in South Korea” by Shin-Il Kang, Korea’s unique characteristics, specifically the ownership structure and corporate governance are examined. The author takes a broad perspective by incorporating corporate culture, business leadership, and ownership structure in Korean corporation. Furthermore, he discusses the substitutability of Korean specific features given the rapidly changing economic environment. Under the Korea’s Chaebol structure, controlling shareholders, who are the real owner of firms, have exercised ownership rights while having a large proportion of shares aided by cross shareholdings. This has been possible through the pyramid ownership control structure as well as cross-shareholding among subsidiaries. Market circumstances related to management costs are not favorable to the firm with a dispersed ownership structure. In Korea, that’s the reason why ownership is concentrated. Given such a structure, the owners minimize costs related to management’s risks. Furthermore it proposes that leadership(firm culture) and ownership are substitutes. Concentrated ownership is needed when the leadership is not mature like Korean Chaebol. 2 The second paper “Issues in Japanese Corporate Governance” by Peter Drysdale examines some of the major issues of Japanese corporate governance today. The role of that main bank in corporate governance and inter corporate shareholding has been well documented. Although Japanese banks have rigorously monitored firms and have had an enormous influence on firms’ decisions and strategies through the owning of shares, firm performance under such a main bank system has not always been positive. Opposing views and their rationale regarding the pessimism behind the performance of firms in the main bank system are also explained in this paper. 3 The paper “Corporate Governance in China” by In Kie Hong discusses the current status and the restructuring efforts of China’s corporate governance. In China, state shareholders possess strong control rights over listed companies allowing them to exercise control even beyond their proportion of shareholding. Various governmental organizations(under the Communist Party) acting as representatives of the state as shareholders have influenced firms enormously, particularly regarding matters of organizing the board of directors as well as electing management. However since they have little incentives to manage state(national) assets and have insufficient capacity to monitor a large number of firms of which they are in charge, the principal-agent problem tends to prevail, which adds to the difficulties in preserving the value of state assets as well. 4 The last paper “Ownership Concentration and Corporate Performances in the Northeast Asian Countries” by Seung-Rok Park compares the relationship between corporate governance structure and corporate performance in Korea, Japan, and China by empirically examining the accounting corporate performances and technical efficiency measures. In the case of Korea, ownership concentration was shown to have positively affected all corporate accounting performance variables such as profit margin, return on shareholders’ funds, return on total assets, and return on capital employed. Furthermore, it was also found that ownership concentration positively affected corporate performance by helping improve the technical efficiency of firms. Unlike Korea, in Japan, there was no sign of a positive effect of ownership concentration on the accounting corporate performance and technical efficiency. Moreover, in the case of China, ownership concentration positively affected profit margin and return on total assets, while no positive effects of ownership concentration were found on return on capital employed and return on shareholders’ funds. It is shown in this study that the difference in the rel