Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Business Administration

Research Studies Project Report (M.B.A.) - Asian Institute of Technology, 2009

Corporate Governance, recently, has gained a lot of importance. With scandals like Enron, W o rId Com and Parmalat etc. and the most latest in this list being Sat yam Computers, India's 4th largest IT firm, the focus on Corporate Governance and its practices is set to increase. The regulators in different countries try to ensure that good governance is adopted by the companies, but some of the companies go beyond the required governance practices on a voluntary basis and it is quite interesting to look at some of the motivations for companies in choosing to have a better level of corporate governance as compared to other companies. This research tries to find out whether companies international presence in terms of companies conducting their operations in countries other than their own has an impact on the corporate governance practices being followed by the companies and does it motivate them to adopt better practices and a higher quality of governance, by conducting a study on a sample of companies listed on the Stock Exchange of Thailand (SET). It looks into evidences of different motivations found for the sample of companies chosen and costs and benefits of good and bad governance