The nature of a firm’s ownership structure will affect the nature of the agency
problems between managers and outside shareholders, and among shareholders.
When ownership is diffused, as be typical for U.S and U.K. firms, agency problems
will stem from the conflicts of interest between outside shareholders and managers
who have an insignificant amount of equity in the firm (Jensen and Meckling, 1976).
On the other hand, when ownership is concentrated to a degree that one owner has
effective control of the firm, as is typically the case in East Asia and Thailand, the
nature of agency problem shifts away from manager-shareholder conflicts (type I
agency problem) to conflicts between the controlling owners and minority
shareholders (type II agency problem) (Claessens and Fan, 2002) which are caused in
two competing ways which are the entrenchment effect and the alignment effect.