Why 'corporate Japan is the one leopard who can change its spots'

Corporate Japan is changing. When the corporate governance code was introduced in Japan in 2014, companies scrambled to find independent directors to put on the board and were more concerned with complying with the letter rather than the spirit of the law.

However, over the ensuing years, the quality of directors has improved significantly and companies have taken the opportunity to improve the functioning of the board by having it take more of an oversight role and focus on strategy rather than operational issues.  Japan 'on the brink of recession': Contrarian play or value trap? One aspect of the corporate governance code is the need to justify cross-shareholdings. The unwinding of cross-shareholdings started during the Japanese financial crisis in the early 2000s, but was running out of steam before the code was introduced. It has...