Japanese Corporate Governance: Improving But Still A Long Way To Go

Corporate Japan has been rocked over the past few years by a series of serious corporate scandals. Kobe Steel Ltd., a major producer of steel and steel products, is the latest casualty. The company has recently admitted faking quality control data on some of its steel products. Kobe’s problems follow in the footsteps of a cover-up at Toyota Motor Corp., as well as falsified data at airbag maker Takata Corp. and Toshiba near-collapse, although Toshiba’s problems are linked to the disastrous purchase of nuclear engineer Westinghouse rather than direct corporate scandal. [singleton] Still, Japan’s corporate issues have attracted plenty of negative attention from the…