Corporate Governance in Latvia - Does It Follow the Pattern of the U.S.?

Seminar paper from the year 2010 in the subject Politics - Region: Russia, grade: 4.8, University of Basel (WWZ), course: Seminar CG, language: English, abstract: Corporate Governance (CG) is an often discussed theme, especially in Western Europe and in the U.S. after the financial crisis 2007-2010. However, in Latvia, which suffered the most in the European Union (EU) from the economic crisis, this is seemingly not a subject of debates. This poses the question whether Latvia is an emerging market in the sense of the development of CG. Therefore I chose to look at this issue more closely. The U.S. CG system influences the most important national CG systems in the world and as there is a lot of research done on the CG in the U.S., it seems to be interesting to compare the development of the CG in the U.S. with that in Latvia. The fact that CG is getting a more and more important issue in Latvia is shown e.g. in the foundation of the Baltic Institute of Corporate Governance in 2009. The Institute's aim is to promote development of responsible CG in the Baltic States. As it is a new organisation, it does not yet have any publications on CG in the Baltic States released. In addition, there is actually no up to date research on CG in Latvia. In 2002, the World Bank conducted the Corporate Governance Assessment based on the OECD principles of CG. There is the recently (in 2009) published book Corporate Governance in Transition Economies edited by R.W. McGee. It contains also an article on CG in Latvia, which, in fact is a summary of the CG assessment by the World Bank in 2002. Regarding all the aspects mentioned above, the analysis of CG in Latvia provides a very interesting research area as it has been insufficiently researched until now. Moreover, a comparison with a well-established CG system like that in the U.S., could be a source of useful information and recommendations for Latvia's companies.