29 - Shareholder Stewardship in Asia

Summary

Stewardship codes as they originated in the UK focus on the role and function of institutional investors. Yet in Asia, where institutional investors play a much less dominant role, stewardship codes have also become popular. This Chapter explores why and what this means for comparative corporate governance. By showing how stewardship codes perform diverse, jurisdiction-specific functions in Asia, this Chapter reveals the utility of stewardship codes as a malleable vehicle for advancing political agendas and halo signalling. It also shows that, contrary to prevailing assumptions, UK-style stewardship codes have not been ‘transplanted’ in both form and function. Rather, Asia exhibits ‘faux convergence’a distinctive form of functional divergence within superficial formal convergence, and which challenges and adds to scholarly understanding of convergence as a global corporate governance phenomenon.