Previous studies have shown that differences in corporate governance systems, traditions, and both formal and informal institutions appear to correlate with firm performance. It has been suggested that Scandinavia and South East Asia have similar ownership structures with vote differential shares, pyramids and strong family ownership. However, the regions have different legal traditions and hence formal institutions, and also informal institutions. This paper presents a detailed overview of firm performance for a sample of listed firms in Scandinavia (represented by Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden) and South East Asia (represented by Malaysia, Thailand, Hong Kong, Taiwan and South Korea). Firm performance is estimated using both the Marginal q-approach and the Tobin’s Q on an unbalanced dataset from 1998 to 2006.