Mon, Jul 15, 2002 page10

• Asia can learn from trials in US

  TRANSPARENCY While businesspeople in the region may be delighted to see the US mired in scandal for a change, they should make sure that their house is in order

  • AFP
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  The slew of scandals rocking corporate America should prompt Asia to review its own accounting and auditing standards, regional analysts say, cautioning against gloating at the apparent reversal of fortunes.

  As Asia emerges stronger after its 1997-1998 financial crisis, it sits in the box seat as the US takes stock of the debacles jarring some of its most revered companies.

  "What a difference five years does make," said Thomas Dawson, chief spokesman for the IMF, whose painful medicine during the Asian crisis sparked much criticism.

  "It's now the US and the industrialized countries that are going through a time of soul-searching and adjustment while East Asia appears to be back on track," he told a recent forum in Singapore.

  Economists, however, warn that despite Asia implementing urgently needed reforms following the 1997 meltdown, it remained vulnerable to problems similar to those which brought down US energy giant Enron Corp and telecom company WorldCom, among others.

  Enron collapsed and WorldCom is fighting bankruptcy after irregularities in their books involving billions of dollars were exposed, raising questions over the quality of US auditing and accounting standards.

  The irony is not lost on some commentators who say the US has lost the moral high ground to lecture Asia on business ethics.

  But Srinivasa Madhur, an economist with the Asian Development Bank, said corporate America's woes should prompt Asia to take a closer look at its own vulnerabilities.

  "If a mature economy like the US, with all the regulatory framework in place, could face this sudden corporate governance issues I would be very concerned. We do not know what we will unearth in this part of the world," he said.

  "I have no reason to rejoice ... This is a time when we should look at our own house in a much more introspective manner."

  Economist Michael Backman, who has written extensively on the stranglehold of families on Asian businesses, said an Asian-style Enron debacle could be in the wings.

  "We had one Enron in the United States, but how many potential Enrons are here in East Asia? Maybe 5,000 ... 10,000?" he said.

  While the Enron issue exposed holes in accounting standards in the United States, they "are even worse" in Asia, Backman said.

  And even though many international accounting firms have partnered with local concerns, operational control remained with the domestic firms.

  "Accounting leaves a lot to be desired in Asia and that's just one of the many things that has to be reformed. And the overhaul has to be more substantial than just the fine tuning in the United States," Backman said.

  Tunku Abdul Aziz, a former Malaysian central banker and now vice chairman of the global anti-corruption group Transparency International, said Asia must get a grip on the problem with sound accounting standards that are rigidly enforced.

  "The main challenge for Asian companies is to make sure that they are up to internationally accepted standards because in a globalised economy, they will just have put their houses in order," he said.

  Jemal-ud-din Kassum, World Bank vice president for East Asia and the Pacific region, said the Enron debacle showed that poor business ethics was not an issue only for developing countries.

  "In fact it remains a big issue in all market economies," he told an anti-corruption forum in Singapore.

  Economists see America's problems as much narrower than those of Asia in 1997-1998, limited to accounting and auditing irregularities.

  The ADB's Madhur said Asia's problems five years ago involved bad loans and lending to favoured clients, lack of independent corporate boards and no protection for the rights of creditors and minority shareholders.

  "The corporate governance issue was a much larger agenda than just a matter of transparency or information disclosure," he said.

  There remained one other difference between the US and Asia with American companies going public with misleading or false information to hide losses, while in Asia the problem was mainly the lack of disclosure.

  "For Asia, it seemed they were errors of omission. For the US, they seemed to be errors of commission," one Asian banker said.
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