This study reviews how historical factors affect the ownership structure and the corporate governance of developed countries. From the starting points of the economic development, corporate governance had been affected by institutional system in the own country. This study provides a history of corporate governance in each country, beginning as early as necessarily explain how that country came to its current state. Inevitably, great mercantile families, politics, and institutional development interact. Despite business groups were already established earlier 20th, there was no agency problems between controlling shareholders and outside investors, because almost all affiliates of business groups were not listed that time. This policy incubated the agency problems between stockholders, but the corporate governance has not been seriously concerned, because the government worked as the guardian of the controlling shareholders of business groups.