The Rise of the Corporate Economy in Southeast Asia

The Rise of the Corporate Economy in Southeast Asia surveys the growth of large corporations in Southeast Asia, focusing in particular on corporate organization, methods of finance, the business environment and corporate governance. It details the different phases of corporate and financial development, particularly liberalization and globalization from the mid-1980s, the 1997 crisis, and subsequent attempts at liberalization and the reform of corporate governance. Raj Brown considers the key themes of the rise of the Southeast Asian corporate economy, and illustrates the theoretical issues through deployment of carefully selected country-specific case studies from across the region.

An examination of critical subjects include:

• the variety of corporate forms found in Southeast Asia
• issues of ethnicity
• the concentration of ownership, particularly among families
• links between the state, the military, banks and corporations
• state-owned enterprises and forms of state control
• the role of foreign capital.

Providing a comprehensive analysis of the rise of the corporate economy in Southeast Asia, this study will be an important resource for students of the region and those concerned with theoretical issues of corporate governance.

Raj Brown is currently Reader in Business History at the School of Management of the Royal Holloway College London. She has previously held positions as Research Fellow at the School of Oriental and African Studies, and as Lecturer in Economic History at the London School of Economics. She is the author of The Indian Minority and Political Change in Malaya, 1945-1957 (1982), Capital and Entrepreneurship in South-East Asia (1994), and Chinese Big Business and the Wealth of Asian Nations (2000, and editor of the four volume Chinese Business Enterprise.