Professional Asset Managers and the Evolution of Corporate Governance in France and Japan: Lessons from a Questionnaire Survey

Corporate governance in the Anglo-Saxon Environment, considered as a benchmark, is usually described as being primarly driven by shareholder interests, whereas the French and Japanese systems are traditionally thought of s more stakeholder oriented. However, the increasing share of international ownership has had a significant impact on corporate governance in both countries over the last two decades. The shareholder-driven discourse on corporate governance best practice, which leans heavily on agency theory, has been progressively institutionalized on a global scale (Aguilera & Cuervo-Cazurra, 2004). Institutional investors and professional asset management firms are likely to have been powerful advocates of institutionalizing discourse on corporate governance best practice (Wirtz, 2008). We conducted a survey in order to study asset management firms' underlying perceptions and motivations in actively influencing corporate governance in France and Japan. Specifically, we report to what extent professional asset managers endorse standard discourse on corporate governance best practice.