In this paper we examine the importance of corporate governance measures in determining firm value during a crisis. Firms with larger equity ownership by foreign investors experience a smaller reduction in their share value. Firms that have higher disclosure quality and alternative sources of external financing also suffer less. In contrast, chaebol firms where ownership is concentratedin owner-managers and/or affiliatedfirms exhibit a larger drop in equity value. Firms in which the controlling shareholder’s voting rights exceed his cash flow rights and those that borrow more from the main banks also have significantly lower returns. We findsim ilar effects for highly diversifiedfir ms, those with high leverage, andthose that are small andrisky. The existence of such systematic evidence on the extent to which firm value is related
to several key indicators of corporate governance suggests that differences in
governance practice at the firm level play an important role in determining value
during a crisis.