Corporate Governance in Emerging Markets

The turning of the 21st century has been marked by reforms in corporate governance practices around the world. Whether due to shocks caused by the economic crisis in East Asia, Russia and Latin America, or by financial scandals in the United States and Europe, prevalent ways of doing business have changed in terms of demands for greater corporate transparency and accountability, shifts in control of ownership, empowerment of new types of owners and so on. Consequently, countries and firms have adapted their corporate governance policies and practices. In this chapter, we explore the current patterns of the ownership structure of publicly listed firms in six emerging countries: Brazil, Chile, South Korea, Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland during the first decade of the 21st century, and compare our data with existing ownership research of these countries in the late 1990s. We conclude that although concentration of corporate shareholdings continues to be a common denominator among these emerging countries, the processes and structures controlling firms across countries are remarkably different