Aspects of Corporate Governance
As mentioned, the corporate governance can be defined as how the company are directed and controlled. The management should run the company in order to serve at the best interest of shareholder/ stakeholders. The problem arises when the management who has an information advantages misused their power against the shareholders’ interest. This problem is called “principle-agent” problem. The agent could be defined as a management in which their action can determine the wealth of the principle, which is the shareholder, or stakeholders who would like the agent to act according to principle’s interest. The question remains whether whose interest the corporation should be set as a first priority is different among different corporate governance system. In many countries such as Germany and Japan, shareholder interest might not be as important as other stakeholders’ interest because of their mandated law or business culture. Moreover, the other principle-agent problem that arise with the other stakeholder can be seen such as when the management has an information advantage over creditor, the problem arises when the management uses the information advantage for the interest of management and shareholder but not from the creditor point of view, the reason behind that can be understood from the risk of that decision.
Each corporate governance in different country has their own way of management even thought many corporate governance system may be similar in corporate law such as Japan adopted some of US Security Law but there are still many differences, specially corporate structure and social value, because as mentioned, of differences in social, economic, historical background.
There are two types that principle can cope with the agent when they don’t behave according to the principle interest. The first one is called the control-oriented approach and second one is called the arm’s length approach. The former one tends to fit with the company that owns by a large block shareholder and latter one is for a diverse shareholder company. For the latter one, when there is a problem, shareholder tends to sell their share as a way out (as a consequence, when the share price fall, the company can be easily targeted for a hostile take-over, but the former one the shareholder tends to exert their control through the replacement of management.
As a consequence of differences in shareholder structure, typically, there are two governance regimes, which can be distinguished as “Outsider” and “Insider”
Outsider Regime can be seen as (OECD)
1.) Dispersed equity ownership with large institutions and holding
2.) Recognised primacy of shareholder interests in the company law
3.) A strong emphasis on the protection of minority investors in securities law and regulation.
4.) Relatively strong requirement for Disclosure.
5.) The way to cope the principle-agent problem is through arm’s length approach.
In the country that has an outsider regime; it tends to have a dispersed equity ownership especially individual ownership such as in the US. However this trend has been changed by an increasing share proportion held by institution investors such as insurance companies, pension funds, and mutual funds, etc such as in the UK. The way the company in outsider country raise their fund is different than in the insider country because they usually raise their fund through the fully develop capital market.