Unlike the US, where managers are subject to disciplinary pressures from the capital markets, Korea generally lacks such pressures. To the extent that the incentives for expropriation by controlling shareholders will increase during a
financial crisis, the agency problem between controlling and minority shareholders is particularly serious at such times. Under these circumstances, chaebol owner managers with concentrated ownership have strong incentives to maximize either their own utility or the overall size of the chaebol rather than the value of individual firms. The differences in the valuation effects between chaebol and non-chaebol firms shown in this paper seem largely attributable to these distorted incentives of chaebol owner-managers.