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"Preface and acknowledgements" [2008] ELECD 379; in Nottage, Luke; Wolff, Leon; Anderson, Kent (eds), "Corporate Governance in the 21st Century" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2008)

Book Title: Corporate Governance in the 21st Century

Editor(s): Nottage, Luke; Wolff, Leon; Anderson, Kent

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781847209238

Section Title: Preface and acknowledgements

Number of pages: 2

Extract:

Preface and acknowledgements
The `lost decade' of economic stagnation in Japan during the 1990s has
become a `found decade' for regulatory and institutional reform. With nearly
all areas of the `law in the books' reviewed, revised and rewritten, the Japan-
ese legal system is no longer the system that foreign commentators felt they
were finally starting to understand by the 1980s. Nowhere is this more evident
than in corporate governance. Corporate and securities legislation has been
comprehensively revamped over 1993­2007, creating a more flexible and
transparent regime for shareholders and managers. Financial markets law and
regulatory institutions have changed, too, creating a new context for Japan's
`main banks' as alternative or additional outside monitors of managerial
performance in borrowing firms. Even the legislation surrounding labour rela-
tions has been amended, reinforcing the `lifelong' security privileges for elite
employee-stakeholders, yet also hastening the growth of other `atypical'
employment relationships. But how do such legislative reforms affecting key
players in Japanese firms, covering areas central to the design of Japanese
capitalism, play out in the `law in action'? Overall, this book argues that a
significant `gradual transformation' has occurred. Although this is evident also
in other advanced industrialised democracies, such as Germany, Japan reveals
especially complex interactions in the various fields that sometimes emphasise
different ways of achieving such transformation.
The book integrates studies of lifelong employment, main bank financing,
insider and outsider governance structures, closely-held companies, corporate
law practice, and takeovers and M&A (mergers and acquisitions). ...