Since the Thai Government's decision to float the baht on July 2, 1997, much of Asia has been experiencing the effects of currency, financial and economic turmoil.
Amid the turmoil, important questions about corporate governance have emerged.
It has become obvious that there is no chance of corporate governance being practised well within individual corporations if the macroeconomic, business, regulatory and political governance environments that support individual corporations are in conflict with one another.
The Western model of corporate governance (notably the model used in Britain and the United States), which multilateral agencies and institutional investors have used as benchmarks, has had the backing of professional shareholders, stakeholders and regulators, all of whom are experienced in both standard-setting and, more importantly, enforcement.
The governments in these countries are democratically elected and are replaced by the same system if they do not perform. This transformation from feudalism to open and accountable government has taken close to 100 years to achieve.
In Asia, the four growing dragon economies have had less than 30 years of economic expansion and the four little tiger economies have had less than 15 years. The tigers' pace of economic growth (or bubble growth) has been such that political and regulatory governance have simply not been able to keep up.