2008 International Conference on Corporate Governance and Financial Integration
Taipei (Taiwan)

The report

On May 16, 2008 the International Conference on Corporate Governance and Financial Integration was held in Taiwan (Taipei). This conference was a joint effort by Fu-Jen Catholic University, Taiwan Academy of Banking and Finance, and Chang-Gung University, all representing Taiwan. This event happened not accidently. Beginning from the year 2005 these institutions aspired by the Center for Corporate Governance and Business Ethics at Fu-Jen Catholic University have arranged a few events on corporate governance, such as conferences and forums with an international representation too.

Activity of experts in corporate governance research from Taiwan during last 3-4 years increased remarkably. Thus, during the year 2007 and several months of the year 2009 one of the world leading corporate governance journals “Corporate Ownership and Control” published nine papers written by the researchers from Taiwan. This is 8 per cent of papers published by the journal for the mentioned period of time. Only the US, United Kingdom and Italy researchers have shown the higher activity in corporate governance research. Meanwhile, the total number of countries the authors of the journal represent is 42, all developed countries and most developing.

We think that corporate governance researchers from Taiwan are worth of high attention of developed countries experts as much promising colleagues for mutual cooperation. This statement was mainly confirmed by a wide international representation of participants of the conference. There were researchers from 9 countries, such as the USA, Canada, Australia, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, Ukraine and certainly from Taiwan. All of them presented their newest investigation results in the area of board of directors, corporate control, corporate ownership, mergers and so on. Overall, at the six sessions the participants presented 28 papers. One of the remarkable reasons of the conference was a participative atmosphere. Each presentation was followed by a discussant comments. Comments were very constructive, providing the presenters with an excellent opportunity to improve their investigations.

All the papers presented at the conference are going to be published in referred journals. These are Corporate Ownership and Control, Taiwan Banking & Finance Quarterly, Journal of Management. Participation of the Publishers in development of the conference is a result of good links of the organizers and the international Publishers.

A very important thing to mention is that the conference has shown all participants very strong links between the theory and practices of corporate governance in Taiwan. Very successful corporate leaders were at the conference. The most famous, but not the sole, were Mr. Ching-Chang Yen, Chairman and CEO of Yuanta Financial Holdings, Mr. Sheng-Cheng Hu, Chairperson of Council for Economic Planning Development (State Yuan), Mr. Sean C. Chen, having a rich experience in taking senior executive positions in the leading banks and companies, Dr. Chia-Lin Chang, the General Manager of Goldman Sachs (Asia) with a branch in Taiwan, Mr. Chin-Yi Fang, Vice-President of Jih Sun Financial Holdings Co. Ltd, Mr. Yun-Ching Chen, General Manager, Chang Hwa Bank and many other corporate leaders.

Plenary session demonstrated to all participants that the conference is in the demand among the world leading researchers. Thus, behavioral issues of corporate governance were introduced by Prof. Randall Morck. His very interesting speech has shown all participants that the essentials of the new field of science named as behavioral corporate governance are laid down successfully.
Prof. William Judge was very convincing in delivering his statements regarding the functions of the board of directors.

Besides that Prof. Judge told us about his impressions of the conference:

I was extremely impressed with Randall Morck's insights about the value of psychology as it relates to corporate governance reform.  It was fresh and creative.  Professors Fan and Wong provided fascinating insights about the interaction between family ownership structures and corporate governance in Asia.  The overall conference was well attended and contained several interesting and pioneering papers.  The sponsorship and involvement from government and industry leaders helped to keep the conference grounded in relevance.

Prof. Rim Zaabar from France said:

The conference of Corporate Governance and Financial Integration was a great opportunity to discuss recent development in the field and exchange with experts in the domain from differents countries. I had the great opportunity to present my paper and receive valuable comments and feadbacks. I want to thank the committee for organising the conference and all the participants.

We are pleased to underline that all organizing efforts of the conference were undertaken by a few experts from Taiwan. These are Prof. Soushan Wu and Prof. Yin-Hua Yeh. Organizing abilities of these honorable men were so high that nothing was missed before, during and after the conference. All international participants were personally introduced by them to leading corporate leaders, making the corporate and theory worlds even. Their personal attention to each participant, especially from abroad, contributed to development of very friendly, almost family atmosphere among the participants. Many events taken part in other, especially developed countries should follow such style of the conference organization, and the 2008 conference in Taiwan is an excellent sample to follow.

We think that the further events to be arranged by the Organizers will attract attention of even more experts from abroad who will appreciate the high level of organization of the conferences.