Asian Financial Crisis Started
Wednesday, 2nd July 1997
The Asian financial crisis started with the 20% devaluation of Thailand Bath. This event occurred two months after Thailand Bath started to suffer from a massive speculative attack and a little more than a month after the bankruptcy of Thailand’s largest finance company, Finance One. This first devaluation of the Thai Baht was soon followed by that of the Philippine Peso, the Malaysian Ringgit, the Indonesian Rupiah and, to a lesser extent, the Singaporean Dollar.
A month earlier, the stock markets of Hong Kong, Indonesia, and South Korea fluctuated with no clear trend. The stock markets of Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines, and Thailand drifted downward, with Philippines and Thailand experiencing the sharpest declines. Taiwan's stock market drifted upwards. A the days draw nearer to 2 July 1997 there is a clear pattern of stock markets collapsing in a contagious fashion.