The 1997-98 Asia financial crisis provides a natural experiment to examine how firms adapt their strategic choices to the changing business environment. In this study, I investigate the evolution of the board and asset structure of the 83 surviving commercial banks in Hong Kong, Indonesia, Korea, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand around the financial crisis. I find that after the crisis (1) the board practice has been significantly improved. In particular, the percentage of independent directors increased and more banks had the board duality and the chairman/CEO with professional backgrounds and fewer banks had politically-connected chairman/CEO; (2) the asset structure tended to be more liquid and diversified. The commercial and industrial loan reduced and the liquid asset and the consumer loan ratio substantially increased. These results suggest that the Asian banks strived to adapt their board and asset structure to the dynamic regulatory and market environment in the post-crisis period. I also find that the locally controlled banks and the banks in the sample economies with more aggressive market opening policy tended to have more significant changes of board and asset structure in the post-crisis period. / This study sheds light on how firms adapt their strategic choices to the changing business environment by examining the adaptation of the board and asset structures of the Asian commercial banks around the financial crisis. My research results also indicate that the new corporate governance of Asian banks shows convergence towards the Anglo-American model and the adoption of more Western board practices can help improving bank transparency and performance. These findings provide some insights for the Asian regulators in the policy formulations in the future. / To examine whether board and asset structure are related to bank transparency, the results show that bank's transparency is positively related to board independence. However, I do not find strong support that bank transparency is related to its asset structure. For the relations between board and asset structure and performance, I find that bank profitability and interest spreads are positively related to the board size and non-political connection of board. Also, the results indicate that the liquid asset, security-to-total assets and consumer lending ratios are positively associated with bank profitability, interest margin and market-to-book ratio and negatively associated with non-performing loan ratios. The overall evidence suggests that the adaptability to dynamic business environment is critical to the Asian bank's performance. / Fung, Lai Kin Sammy. / "March 2008." / Adviser: Joseph P. H. Fan. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 70-03, Section: A, page: 0928. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 73-77). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. [Ann Arbor, MI] : ProQuest Information and Learning, [200-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / School code: 1307.