This paper presents a summary of the main causes of the recent financial crisis and tries to draw useful lessons on this task for Vietnamese banks. | RESEARCHES & DISCUSSIONS As financial intermediaries with their own characteristics, healthy corporate governance in banks is important to stability of the financial system. The recent financial crisis, however, has revealed many shortcomings in corporate governance in banks in crisis-orginated countries. Many researches argue that poor corporate governance in banks is one of main causes of the financial crisis. This paper presents a summary of the main causes of the recent financial crisis and tries to draw useful lessons on this task for Vietnamese banks. Keywords: corporate governance, risk management, banking supervision 1. Problem Effective corporate governance is a prerequisite for the existence and sustainable development of a company in particular, and the whole economy in general. Banks play the role of financial intermediaries in the economy, and consequently relate to the interests of many individuals and organizations; therefore, the issue of corporate governance in banks becomes even more important. However, the recent global financial crisis has shown many problems relating to corporate governance in banks. And the main reason lies in both the management of each bank as well as the management and supervision of banks’ operations by relevant authorities in the crisis nations. Most of the studies and analyses of academics, 28 Economic Development Review - June 2011 the managers and policymakers, and the bank executives themselves, have indicated that the weakness and failure in corporate governance have led to the collapse of a series of banks right in nations which are seen as models for corporate governance like the . and UK, thus consequently created a domino effect leading to the global financial crisis. As an action to beef up the operations of banks, nations seen as the source of the crisis - the ., and some others in the EU have issued new regulations and intervened directly into financial institutions to tighten the corporate .
