We examine the interaction between the legal protection of investors, corporate governance, and investable premia in emerging markets. In a multi-country setting and using a novel dataset we find that better-governed firms experience significantly greater stock price increases upon equity market liberalization. We look to see whether well-governed firms in poorly governed countries enjoy an investability premium as measured by Tobin's q. We find that they do. Investors look beyond the seemingly weak country-level governance structures, and focus on corporate governance. (C) 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.