ABSTRACT
ZVU is a Czech heavy engineering and manufacturing joint-stock company supplying equipment and systems to the brewery, sugar-processing, chemical, and energy industries. The former Soviet Union represents a potentially large market. Many plants ZVU built there are in need of refurbishing and modernization. In 1991, ZVU began to prepare its privatization project and hired an Austrian consulting firm to prepare ZVU for privatization and to find a major international engineering group that would buy a majority stake in ZVU. ZVU’s privatization led to the creation of a new system of corporate governance. ZVU’s management felt that a foreign investor would have its own ideas about everything from organizational structure to accounting software. So, managers chose not to change anything until the identity of the foreign investor was clarified. Corporate governance at ZVU centers on four entities: the general assembly of stockholders, the board of directors, the supervisory board, and the general director.
