Governance and Expropriation

In his introduction, Lang (finance, Chinese University of Hong Kong) explains how corporations outside the US are often owned in a pyramid format in which a private holding company "sits at the top of a control pyramid, and several tiers of companies are present. Firms in the lowest tier are the group's publicly listed companies. The usual practice of expropriation is to pass bad assets to companies down the pyramid and then pass the proceeds up the pyramid...." He demonstrates a pyramid model, discusses how vulnerability can be assessed, and looks at firms in Western Europe and Asia. Reprinted from financial journals during the period 1999-2004, the 15 articles in this anthology are grouped in sections on ownership structures in Western Europe and Asia; expropriation and tunneling; value, information and the separation of ownership from control; and country studies on the effect of separation of ownership from control. Indexing is by name, but not by subject.