Did Families Lose or Gain Control after the East Asian Financial Crisis?

January 2003Forthcoming in Designing Financial Systems in East Asia and Japan: Toward a Twenty-First Century Paradigm edited by Joseph Fan, Masaharu Hanazaki, and Juro Teranishi, Routledge.This paper investigates the ownership and control of Thai public firms in the period after the East Asian financial crisis, compared to those in the pre-crisis period. Using the comprehensive unique database of ownership and board structures, we find that the ownership and control appear to be more concentrated in the hands of controlling shareholders subsequent to the crisis. Interestingly, even though families remain the most prevalent owners of Thai firms and are still actively involved in the management after the financial crisis, their role as the controlling shareholder becomes less significant. In addition, our results show that direct shareholdings are most frequently used as a means of control in both periods. Pyramids and cross-shareholdings, however, are employed to the lesser extent following the crisis.1 v