1、qThe opinions expressed do not necessarily re#ect those of the World Bank. Larry H.P. Lang gratefully acknowledges the Hong Kong UGC earmarked grant for research support. We thank Magdi Amin,Jerry Caprio, Chad Leechor, Rapoel La Porta (the referee), seminar participants at the World Bank, the Intern
2、ational Monetary Fund, Vanderbilt University, the Thai Federation of Industries, the Korea Institute of Finance, and especially Tatiana Nenova and Andrei Shleifer for helpful suggestions. *Corresponding author. Tel.: #1-202-473-4748; fax: #1-202-522-0308. E-mail address: sdjankovworldbank.org (S. Dj
3、ankov). Journal of Financial Economics 58 (2000) 81112 The separation of ownership and control in East Asian Corporationsq Stijn Claessens!, Simeon Djankov!,*, Larry H.P. Lang !World Bank, Washington, DC, 20433 USA Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, NT, Hong Kong Received 4 February 1999; rece
4、ived in revised form 1 December 1999 Abstract We examine the separation of ownership and control for 2,980 corporations in nine East Asian countries. In all countries, voting rights frequently exceed cash-#ow rights via pyramid structures and cross-holdings. The separation of ownership and control i
5、s most pronounced among family-controlled rms and small rms. More than two-thirds of rms are controlled by a single shareholder. Managers of closely held rms tend to be relatives of the controlling shareholders family. Older rms are generally family-control- led, dispelling the notion that ownership
6、 becomes dispersedover time.Finally, signicant corporate wealth in East Asia is concentrated among a few families. ( 2000 Elsevier Science S.A. All rights reserved. JEL classixcation: G32; L22 Keywords: Ownership; Control; East Asian corporations 0304-405X/00/$-see front matter ( 2000 Elsevier Scien
7、ce S.A. All rights reserved. PII: S0 30 4 -4 0 5 X (0 0 ) 0 0 0 6 7 - 2 1. Introduction Much of the literature on the role and functioning of the modern rm is based on the assumption of widely dispersed ownership. This notion originally derives from Berle and Means (1932) and has been propagated by
8、Baumol (1959), Jensen and Meckling (1976), and Grossman and Hart (1980). A more recent line of the literature shows, however, that some concentration of ownership exists even among the largest American corporations (Demsetz, 1983; Shleifer and Vishny, 1986; Morck et al., 1988), and that an even high
9、er level of ownership concentration exists in other developed and developing countries (La Porta et al., 1998, 1999). La Porta et al. (1999) is the rst study that investigates the issue of ultimate control, i.e., they trace the chain of ownership to nd who has the most voting rights. The ndings sugg
10、est that ownership and control can be separated to the benet of the large shareholders. In this paper, we improve on their methodo- logy and apply it to East Asia. We investigate the separation of ownership and control in 2,980 publicly traded companies in nine East Asian countries (Hong Kong, Indon
11、esia, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, and Thailand). In all East Asian countries, control is enhanced through pyramid structures, andcross-holdingsamongrms.Votingrightsconsequentlyexceed formal cash-#ow rights, especially in Indonesia, Japan, and Singapore. We nd th
12、at more than two-thirds of rms are controlled by a single shareholder. Separation of management from ownership control is rare, and the top manage- ment of about 60% of rms that are not widely held is related to the family of the controlling shareholder. These ndings have important implications for
13、the ability and incentives of controlling shareholders to expropriate from minority shareholders, as shown in a companion paper (Claessens et al., 1999). We nd extensivefamily controlin more than halfof East Asian corporations. Signicant cross-country di!erences exist, however. Corporations in J$倆$堆
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