Internationalization of Corporate Governance in Japan

Sammanfattning: This thesis investigates the impact of internationalization on corporate governance in Japan. As a consequence of increasingly global competition, different systems of corporate governance come into direct contact with each other. The Japanese economy has become more international over the last two decades, and it is therefore interesting to see whether internationalization has an impact on corporate governance of Japanese companies. Using OLS regressions on a sample of 236 companies listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange First Section, we test whether internationalization in the form of foreign presence and foreign ownership are related to board size and composition in Japanese companies. We find that foreign presence and foreign ownership are positively related to the adoption of Anglo-American board practices, i.e. smaller boards with a higher ratio of outside directors.