Corporate governance

GOVERNANCE is the exercise of political, economic and administrative

authority to manage a nation's affairs. It is the complex mechanisms,
processes and institutions through which citizens and groups articulate
their interests, exercise their legal rights and obligations, and mediate
their differences." (UNDP)

“GOVERNANCE is the manner in which power is exercised in the

management of a country’s social and economic resources for
development. Governance means the way those with power use that
power.” (ADB)

GOVERNANCE is "… the traditions and institutions by which authority in

a country is exercised for the common good. This includes (i) the
process by which those in authority are selected, monitored and
replaced, (ii) the capacity of the government to effectively manage its
resources and implement sound policies, and (iii) the respect of
citizens and the state for the institutions that govern economic and
social interactions among them. " (World Bank

Corporate governance is the set of processes, customs, policies, laws, and institutions
affecting the way a corporation (or company) is directed, administered or controlled.
Corporate governance also includes the relationships among the many stakeholders
involved and the goals for which the corporation is governed. The principal stakeholders
are the shareholders, management, and the board of directors. Other stakeholders include
employees, customers, creditors, suppliers, regulators, and the community at large.
Corporate governance is a multi-faceted subject.[1] An important theme of corporate
governance is to ensure the accountability of certain individuals in an organization
through mechanisms that try to reduce or eliminate the principal-agent problem. A related
but separate thread of discussions focuses on the impact of a corporate governance
system in economic efficiency, with a strong emphasis on shareholders' welfare. There
are yet other aspects to the corporate governance subject, such as the stakeholder view
and the corporate governance models around the world (see section 9 below).
There has been renewed interest in the corporate governance practices of modern
corporations since 2001, particularly due to the high-profile collapses of a number of
large U.S. firms such as Enron Corporation and MCI Inc. (formerly WorldCom). In 2002,
the U.S. federal government passed the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, intending to restore public
confidence in corporate governance

Definition
In A Board Culture of Corporate Governance, business author Gabrielle O'Donovan
defines corporate governance as 'an internal system encompassing policies, processes and
people, which serves the needs of shareholders and other stakeholders, by directing and
controlling management activities with good business savvy, objectivity, accountability
and integrity. Sound corporate governance is reliant on external marketplace commitment
and legislation, plus a healthy board culture which safeguards policies and processes'.
O'Donovan goes on to say that 'the perceived quality of a company's corporate
governance can influence its share price as well as the cost of raising capital. Quality is
determined by the financial markets, legislation and other external market forces plus
how policies and processes are implemented and how people are led. External forces are,
to a large extent, outside the circle of control of any board. The internal environment is
quite a different matter, and offers companies the opportunity to differentiate from
competitors through their board culture. To date, too much of corporate governance
debate has centred on legislative policy, to deter fraudulent activities and transparency
policy which misleads executives to treat the symptoms and not the cause.
It is a system of structuring, operating and controlling a company with a view to achieve
long term strategic goals to satisfy shareholders, creditors, employees, customers and
suppliers, and complying with the legal and regulatory requirements, apart from meeting
environmental and local community needs.
Report of SEBI committee (India) on Corporate Governance defines corporate
governance as the acceptance by management of the inalienable rights of shareholders as
the true owners of the corporation and of their own role as trustees on behalf of the
shareholders. It is about commitment to values, about ethical business conduct and about
making a distinction between personal & corporate funds in the management of a
company.” The definition is drawn from the Gandhian principle of trusteeship and the
Directive Principles of the Indian Constitution. Corporate Governance is viewed as ethics
and a moral duty.

History
In the 19th century, state corporation laws enhanced the rights of corporate boards to
govern without unanimous consent of shareholders in exchange for statutory benefits like
appraisal rights, to make corporate governance more efficient. Since that time, and
because most large publicly traded corporations in the US are incorporated under
corporate administration friendly Delaware law, and because the US's wealth has been
increasingly securitized into various corporate entities and institutions, the rights of
individual owners and shareholders have become increasingly derivative and dissipated.
The concerns of shareholders over administration pay and stock losses periodically has
led to more frequent calls for corporate governance reforms.
In the 20th century in the immediate aftermath of the Wall Street Crash of 1929 legal
scholars such as Adolf Augustus Berle, Edwin Dodd, and Gardiner C. Means pondered
on the changing role of the modern corporation in society. Berle and Means' monograph
"The Modern Corporation and Private Property" (1932, Macmillan) continues to have a
profound influence on the conception of corporate governance in scholarly debates today.
From the Chicago school of economics, Ronald Coase's "The Nature of the Firm" (1937)
introduced the notion of transaction costs into the understanding of why firms are
founded and how they continue to behave. Fifty years later, Eugene Fama and Michael
Jensen's "The Separation of Ownership and Control" (1983, Journal of Law and
Economics) firmly established agency theory as a way of understanding corporate
governance: the firm is seen as a series of contracts. Agency theory's dominance was
highlighted in a 1989 article by Kathleen Eisenhardt ("Agency theory: an assessement
and review", Academy of Management Review).
US expansion after World War II through the emergence of multinational corporations
saw the establishment of the managerial class. Accordingly, the following Harvard
Business School management professors published influential monographs studying their
prominence: Myles Mace (entrepreneurship), Alfred D. Chandler, Jr. (business history),
Jay Lorsch (organizational behavior) and Elizabeth MacIver (organizational behavior).
According to Lorsch and MacIver "many large corporations have dominant control over
business affairs without sufficient accountability or monitoring by their board of
directors."
Since the late 1970’s, corporate governance has been the subject of significant debate in
the U.S. and around the globe. Bold, broad efforts to reform corporate governance have
been driven, in part, by the needs and desires of shareowners to exercise their rights of
corporate ownership and to increase the value of their shares and, therefore, wealth. Over
the past three decades, corporate directors’ duties have expanded greatly beyond their
traditional legal responsibility of duty of loyalty to the corporation and its shareowners.
In the first half of the 1990s, the issue of corporate governance in the U.S. received
considerable press attention due to the wave of CEO dismissals (e.g.: IBM, Kodak,
Honeywell) by their boards. The California Public Employees' Retirement System
(CalPERS) led a wave of institutional shareholder activism (something only very rarely
seen before), as a way of ensuring that corporate value would not be destroyed by the
now traditionally cozy relationships between the CEO and the board of directors (e.g., by
the unrestrained issuance of stock options, not infrequently back dated).
In 1997, the East Asian Financial Crisis saw the economies of Thailand, Indonesia, South
Korea, Malaysia and The Philippines severely affected by the exit of foreign capital after
property assets collapsed. The lack of corporate governance mechanisms in these
countries highlighted the weaknesses of the institutions in their economies.
In the early 2000s, the massive bankruptcies (and criminal malfeasance) of Enron and
Worldcom, as well as lesser corporate debacles, such as Adelphia Communications,
AOL, Arthur Andersen, Global Crossing, Tyco, led to increased shareholder and
governmental interest in corporate governance. This is reflected in the passage of the
Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002.

Impact of Corporate Governance

The positive effect of corporate governance on different stakeholders ultimately is a
strengthened economy, and hence good corporate governance is a tool for socio-
economic development.[4]

Role of Institutional Investors

Many years ago, worldwide, buyers and sellers of corporation stocks were individual
investors, such as wealthy businessmen or families,who often had a vested, personal and
emotional interest in the corporations whose shares they owned. Over time, markets have
become largely institutionalized: buyers and sellers are largely institutions (e.g., pension
funds, mutual funds, hedge funds, exchange-traded funds, other investor groups;
insurance companies, banks, brokers, and other financial institutions).
The rise of the institutional investor has brought with it some increase of professional
diligence which has tended to improve regulation of the stock market (but not necessarily
in the interest of the small investor or even of the naïve institutions, of which there are
many). Note that this process occurred simultaneously with the direct growth of
individuals investing indirectly in the market (for example individuals have twice as
much money in mutual funds as they do in bank accounts). However this growth
occurred primarily by way of individuals turning over their funds to 'professionals' to
manage, such as in mutual funds. In this way, the majority of investment now is
described as "institutional investment" even though the vast majority of the funds are for
the benefit of individual investors.
Program trading, the hallmark of institutional trading, averaged over 80% of NYSE
trades in some months of 2007. (Moreover, these statistics do not reveal the full extent of
the practice, because of so-called 'iceberg' orders. See Quantity and display instructions
under last reference.)
Unfortunately, there has been a concurrent lapse in the oversight of large corporations,
which are now almost all owned by large institutions. The Board of Directors of large
corporations used to be chosen by the principal shareholders, who usually had an
emotional as well as monetary investment in the company (think Ford), and the Board
diligently kept an eye on the company and its principal executives (they usually hired and
fired the President, or Chief Executive Officer— CEO).
A recent study by Credit Suisse found that companies in which "founding families retain
a stake of more than 10% of the company's capital enjoyed a superior performance over
their respective sectorial peers." Since 1996, this superior performance amounts to 8%
per year.Forget the celebrity CEO. "Look beyond Six Sigma and the latest technology
fad. One of the biggest strategic advantages a company can have, [BusinessWeek has
found], is blood lines." In that last study, "BW identified five key ingredients that
contribute to superior performance. Not all are qualities unique to enterprises with
retained family interests. But they do go far to explain why it helps to have someone at
the helm— or active behind the scenes— who has more than a mere paycheck and the
prospect of a cozy retirement at stake." See also, "Revolt in the Boardroom," by Alan
Murray.
Nowadays, if the owning institutions don't like what the President/CEO is doing and they
feel that firing them will likely be costly (think "golden handshake") and/or time
consuming, they will simply sell out their interest. The Board is now mostly chosen by
the President/CEO, and may be made up primarily of their friends and associates, such as
officers of the corporation or business colleagues. Since the (institutional) shareholders
rarely object, the President/CEO generally takes the Chair of the Board position for
his/herself (which makes it much more difficult for the institutional owners to "fire"
him/her). Occasionally, but rarely, institutional investors support shareholder resolutions
on such matters as executive pay and anti-takeover, aka, "poison pill" measures.
Finally, the largest pools of invested money (such as the mutual fund 'Vanguard 500', or
the largest investment management firm for corporations, State Street Corp.) are designed
simply to invest in a very large number of different companies with sufficient liquidity,
based on the idea that this strategy will largely eliminate individual company financial or
other risk and, therefore, these investors have even less interest in a particular company's
governance.
Since the marked rise in the use of Internet transactions from the 1990s, both individual
and professional stock investors around the world have emerged as a potential new kind
of major (short term) force in the direct or indirect ownership of corporations and in the
markets: the casual participant. Even as the purchase of individual shares in any one
corporation by individual investors diminishes, the sale of derivatives (e.g., exchange-
traded funds (ETFs), Stock market index options etc.) has soared. So, the interests of
most investors are now increasingly rarely tied to the fortunes of individual corporations.
But, the ownership of stocks in markets around the world varies; for example, the
majority of the shares in the Japanese market are held by financial companies and
industrial corporations (there is a large and deliberate amount of cross-holding among
Japanese keiretsu corporations and within S. Korean chaebol 'groups') , whereas stock in
the USA or the UK and Europe are much more broadly owned, often still by large
individual investors.

Parties to corporate governance

Parties involved in corporate governance include the regulatory body (e.g. the Chief
Executive Officer, the board of directors, management,shareholders and Auditors). Other
stakeholders who take part include suppliers, employees, creditors, customers and the
community at large.
In corporations, the shareholder delegates decision rights to the manager to act in the
principal's best interests. This separation of ownership from control implies a loss of
effective control by shareholders over managerial decisions. Partly as a result of this
separation between the two parties, a system of corporate governance controls is
implemented to assist in aligning the incentives of managers with those of shareholders.
With the significant increase in equity holdings of investors, there has been an
opportunity for a reversal of the separation of ownership and control problems because
ownership is not so diffuse.
A board of directors often plays a key role in corporate governance. It is their
responsibility to endorse the organisation's strategy, develop directional policy, appoint,
supervise and remunerate senior executives and to ensure accountability of the
organisation to its owners and authorities.
The Company Secretary, known as a Corporate Secretary in the US and often referred to
as a Chartered Secretary if qualified by the Institute of Chartered Secretaries and
Administrators (ICSA), is a high ranking professional who is trained to uphold the
highest standards of corporate governance, effective operations, compliance and
administration.
All parties to corporate governance have an interest, whether direct or indirect, in the
effective performance of the organisation. Directors, workers and management receive
salaries, benefits and reputation, while shareholders receive capital return. Customers
receive goods and services; suppliers receive compensation for their goods or services. In
return these individuals provide value in the form of natural, human, social and other
forms of capital.
A key factor is an individual's decision to participate in an organisation e.g. through
providing financial capital and trust that they will receive a fair share of the
organisational returns. If some parties are receiving more than their fair return then
participants may choose to not continue participating leading to organizational collapse.

Principles
Key elements of good corporate governance principles include honesty, trust and
integrity, openness, performance orientation, responsibility and accountability, mutual
respect, and commitment to the organization.
Of importance is how directors and management develop a model of governance that
aligns the values of the corporate participants and then evaluate this model periodically
for its effectiveness. In particular, senior executives should conduct themselves honestly
and ethically, especially concerning actual or apparent conflicts of interest, and disclosure
in financial reports.
Commonly accepted principles of corporate governance include:

•Rights and equitable treatment of shareholders: Organizations should respect the

rights of shareholders and help shareholders to exercise those rights. They can
help shareholders exercise their rights by effectively communicating information
that is understandable and accessible and encouraging shareholders to participate
in general meetings.

•Interests of other stakeholders: Organizations should recognize that they have

legal and other obligations to all legitimate stakeholders.
 •Role and responsibilities of the board: The board needs a range of skills and
understanding to be able to deal with various business issues and have the ability
to review and challenge management performance. It needs to be of sufficient size
and have an appropriate level of commitment to fulfill its responsibilities and
duties. There are issues about the appropriate mix of executive and non-executive
directors.

•Integrity and ethical behaviour: Ethical and responsible decision making is not
only important for public relations, but it is also a necessary element in risk
management and avoiding lawsuits. Organizations should develop a code of
conduct for their directors and executives that promotes ethical and responsible
decision making. It is important to understand, though, that reliance by a company
on the integrity and ethics of individuals is bound to eventual failure. Because of
this, many organizations establish Compliance and Ethics Programs to minimize
the risk that the firm steps outside of ethical and legal boundaries.

•Disclosure and transparency: Organizations should clarify and make publicly

known the roles and responsibilities of board and management to provide
shareholders with a level of accountability. They should also implement
procedures to independently verify and safeguard the integrity of the company's
financial reporting. Disclosure of material matters concerning the organization
should be timely and balanced to ensure that all investors have access to clear,
factual information.
Issues involving corporate governance principles include:

•internal controls and internal auditors

•the independence of the entity's external auditors and the quality of their audits

•oversight and management of risk

•oversight of the preparation of the entity's financial statements

•review of the compensation arrangements for the chief executive officer and other
senior executives

•the resources made available to directors in carrying out their duties

•the way in which individuals are nominated for positions on the board

•dividend policy
Nevertheless "corporate governance," despite some feeble attempts from various quarters,
remains an ambiguous and often misunderstood phrase. For quite some time it was
confined only to corporate management. That is not so. It is something much broader, for
it must include a fair, efficient and transparent administration and strive to meet certain
well defined, written objectives. Corporate governance must go well beyond law. The
quantity, quality and frequency of financial and managerial disclosure, the degree and
extent to which the board of Director (BOD) exercise their trustee responsibilities
(largely an ethical commitment), and the commitment to run a transparent organization-
these should be constantly evolving due to interplay of many factors and the roles played
by the more progressive/responsible elements within the corporate sector. John G. Smale,
a former member of the General Motors board of directors, wrote: "The Board is
responsible for the successful perpetuation of the corporation. That responsibility cannot
be relegated to management."

Mechanisms and controls

Corporate governance mechanisms and controls are designed to reduce the inefficiencies
that arise from moral hazard and adverse selection. For example, to monitor managers'
behaviour, an independent third party (the external auditor) attests the accuracy of
information provided by management to investors. An ideal control system should
regulate both motivation and ability.

Internal corporate governance controls

Internal corporate governance controls monitor activities and then take corrective action
to accomplish organisational goals. Examples include:

•Monitoring by the board of directors: The board of directors, with its legal
authority to hire, fire and compensate top management, safeguards invested
capital. Regular board meetings allow potential problems to be identified,
discussed and avoided. Whilst non-executive directors are thought to be more
independent, they may not always result in more effective corporate governance
and may not increase performance.Different board structures are optimal for
different firms. Moreover, the ability of the board to monitor the firm's executives
is a function of its access to information. Executive directors possess superior
knowledge of the decision-making process and therefore evaluate top
management on the basis of the quality of its decisions that lead to financial
performance outcomes, ex ante. It could be argued, therefore, that executive
directors look beyond the financial criteria.

•Internal control procedures and internal auditors: Internal control procedures are
policies implemented by an entity's board of directors, audit committee,
management, and other personnel to provide reasonable assurance of the entity
achieving its objectives related to reliable financial reporting, operating
efficiency, and compliance with laws and regulations. Internal auditors are
personnel within an organization who test the design and implementation of the
entity's internal control procedures and the reliability of its financial reporting.

•Balance of power: The simplest balance of power is very common; require that the
President be a different person from the Treasurer. This application of separation
of power is further developed in companies where separate divisions check and
 balance each other's actions. One group may propose company-wide
administrative changes, another group review and can veto the changes, and a
third group check that the interests of people (customers, shareholders,
employees) outside the three groups are being met.

•Remuneration: Performance-based remuneration is designed to relate some

proportion of salary to individual performance. It may be in the form of cash or
non-cash payments such as shares and share options, superannuation or other
benefits. Such incentive schemes, however, are reactive in the sense that they
provide no mechanism for preventing mistakes or opportunistic behaviour, and
can elicit myopic behaviour.

External corporate governance controls

External corporate governance controls encompass the controls external stakeholders
exercise over the organisation. Examples include:

•competition

•debt covenants

•demand for and assessment of performance information (especially financial

statements)

•government regulations

•managerial labour market

•media pressure

•takeovers

Systemic problems of corporate governance

•Demand for information: A barrier to shareholders using good information is the
cost of processing it, especially to a small shareholder. The traditional answer to
this problem is the efficient market hypothesis (in finance, the efficient market
hypothesis (EMH) asserts that financial markets are efficient), which suggests that
the small shareholder will free ride on the judgements of larger professional
investors.

•Monitoring costs: In order to influence the directors, the shareholders must combine
with others to form a significant voting group which can pose a real threat of
carrying resolutions or appointing directors at a general meeting.

•Supply of accounting information: Financial accounts form a crucial link in enabling

providers of finance to monitor directors. Imperfections in the financial reporting
process will cause imperfections in the effectiveness of corporate governance.
This should, ideally, be corrected by the working of the external auditing process.
 •Role of the accountant
Financial reporting is a crucial element necessary for the corporate governance system to
function effectively. Accountants and auditors are the primary providers of information to
capital market participants. The directors of the company should be entitled to expect that
management prepare the financial information in compliance with statutory and ethical
obligations, and rely on auditors' competence.
Current accounting practice allows a degree of choice of method in determining the
method of measurement, criteria for recognition, and even the definition of the
accounting entity. The exercise of this choice to improve apparent performance
(popularly known as creative accounting) imposes extra information costs on users. In the
extreme, it can involve non-disclosure of information.
One area of concern is whether the accounting firm acts as both the independent auditor
and management consultant to the firm they are auditing. This may result in a conflict of
interest which places the integrity of financial reports in doubt due to client pressure to
appease management. The power of the corporate client to initiate and terminate
management consulting services and, more fundamentally, to select and dismiss
accounting firms contradicts the concept of an independent auditor. Changes enacted in
the United States in the form of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (in response to the Enron
situation as noted below) prohibit accounting firms from providing both auditing and
management consulting services. Similar provisions are in place under clause 49 of SEBI
Act in India.
The Enron collapse is an example of misleading financial reporting. Enron concealed
huge losses by creating illusions that a third party was contractually obliged to pay the
amount of any losses. However, the third party was an entity in which Enron had a
substantial economic stake. In discussions of accounting practices with Arthur Andersen,
the partner in charge of auditing, views inevitably led to the client prevailing.
However, good financial reporting is not a sufficient condition for the effectiveness of
corporate governance if users don't process it, or if the informed user is unable to exercise
a monitoring role due to high costs (see Systemic problems of corporate governance
above).

Corporate governance models around the world

Although the US model of corporate governance is the most notorious, there is a
considerable variation in corporate governance models around the world. The intricated
shareholding structures of keiretsus in Japan, the heavy presence of banks in the equity of
German firms, the chaebols in South Korea and many others are examples of
arrangements which try to respond to the same corporate governance challenges as in the
US.
In the United States, the main problem is the conflict of interest between widely-
dispersed shareholders and powerful managers. In Europe, the main problem is that the
voting ownership is tightly-held by families through pyramidal ownership and dual
shares (voting and nonvoting). This can lead to "self-dealing", where the controlling
families favor subsidiaries for which they have higher cash flow rights.

Anglo-American Model
There are many different models of corporate governance around the world. These differ
according to the variety of capitalism in which they are embedded. The liberal model that
is common in Anglo-American countries tends to give priority to the interests of
shareholders. The coordinated model that one finds in Continental Europe and Japan also
recognizes the interests of workers, managers, suppliers, customers, and the community.
Each model has its own distinct competitive advantage. The liberal model of corporate
governance encourages radical innovation and cost competition, whereas the coordinated
model of corporate governance facilitates incremental innovation and quality
competition. However, there are important differences between the U.S. recent approach
to governance issues and what has happened in the UK. In the United States, a
corporation is governed by a board of directors, which has the power to choose an
executive officer, usually known as the chief executive officer. The CEO has broad
power to manage the corporation on a daily basis, but needs to get board approval for
certain major actions, such as hiring his/her immediate subordinates, raising money,
acquiring another company, major capital expansions, or other expensive projects. Other
duties of the board may include policy setting, decision making, monitoring
management's performance, or corporate control.
The board of directors is nominally selected by and responsible to the shareholders, but
the bylaws of many companies make it difficult for all but the largest shareholders to
have any influence over the makeup of the board; normally, individual shareholders are
not offered a choice of board nominees among which to choose, but are merely asked to
rubberstamp the nominees of the sitting board. Perverse incentives have pervaded many
corporate boards in the developed world, with board members beholden to the chief
executive whose actions they are intended to oversee. Frequently, members of the boards
of directors are CEOs of other corporations, which some see as a conflict of interest.

Codes and guidelines

Corporate governance principles and codes have been developed in different countries
and issued from stock exchanges, corporations, institutional investors, or associations
(institutes) of directors and managers with the support of governments and international
organizations. As a rule, compliance with these governance recommendations is not
mandated by law, although the codes linked to stock exchange listing requirements may
have a coercive effect.
For example, companies quoted on the London and Toronto Stock Exchanges formally
need not follow the recommendations of their respective national codes. However, they
must disclose whether they follow the recommendations in those documents and, where
not, they should provide explanations concerning divergent practices. Such disclosure
requirements exert a significant pressure on listed companies for compliance.
In the United States, companies are primarily regulated by the state in which they
incorporate though they are also regulated by the federal government and, if they are
public, by their stock exchange. The highest number of companies are incorporated in
Delaware, including more than half of the Fortune 500. This is due to Delaware's
generally business-friendly corporate legal environment and the existence of a state court
dedicated solely to business issues (Delaware Court of Chancery).
Most states' corporate law generally follow the American Bar Association's Model
Business Corporation Act. While Delaware does not follow the Act, it still considers its
provisions and several prominent Delaware justices, including former Delaware Supreme
Court Chief Justice E. Norman Veasey, participate on ABA committees.
One issue that has been raised since the Disney decision in 2005 is the degree to which
companies manage their governance responsibilities; in other words, do they merely try
to supersede the legal threshold, or should they create governance guidelines that ascend
to the level of best practice. For example, the guidelines issued by associations of
directors (see Section 3 above), corporate managers and individual companies tend to be
wholly voluntary. For example, The GM Board Guidelines reflect the company’s efforts
to improve its own governance capacity. Such documents, however, may have a wider
multiplying effect prompting other companies to adopt similar documents and standards
of best practice.
One of the most influential guidelines has been the 1999 OECD Principles of Corporate
Governance. This was revised in 2004. The OECD remains a proponent of corporate
governance principles throughout the world.
Building on the work of the OECD, other international organisations, private sector
associations and more than 20 national corporate governance codes, the United Nations
Intergovernmental Working Group of Experts on International Standards of Accounting
and Reporting (ISAR) has produced voluntary Guidance on Good Practices in Corporate
Governance Disclosure. This internationally agreed benchmark consists of more than
fifty distinct disclosure items across five broad categories:

•Auditing

•Board and management structure and process

•Corporate responsibility and compliance

•Financial transparency and information disclosure

•Ownership structure and exercise of control rights

The World Business Council for Sustainable Development WBCSD has done work on
corporate governance, particularly on accountability and reporting, and in 2004 created
an Issue Management Tool: Strategic challenges for business in the use of corporate
responsibility codes, standards, and frameworks.This document aims to provide general
information, a "snap-shot" of the landscape and a perspective from a think-
tank/professional association on a few key codes, standards and frameworks relevant to
the sustainability agenda.

Ownership structures
Ownership structures refers to the various patterns in which shareholders seem to set up
with respect to a certain group of firms. It is a tool frequently employed by policy-makers
and researchers in their analyses of corporate governance within a country or business
group.And ownership can be changed by the stakeholders of the company.
Generally, ownership structures are identified by using some observable measures of
ownership concentration (i.e. concentration ratios) and then making a sketch showing its
visual representation. The idea behind the concept of ownership structures is to be able to
understand the way in which shareholders interact with firms and, whenever possible, to
locate the ultimate owner of a particular group of firms. Some examples of ownership
structures include pyramids, cross-share holdings, rings, and webs.

Corporate governance and firm performance

In its 'Global Investor Opinion Survey' of over 200 institutional investors first undertaken
in 2000 and updated in 2002, McKinsey found that 80% of the respondents would pay a
premium for well-governed companies. They defined a well-governed company as one
that had mostly out-side directors, who had no management ties, undertook formal
evaluation of its directors, and was responsive to investors' requests for information on
governance issues. The size of the premium varied by market, from 11% for Canadian
companies to around 40% for companies where the regulatory backdrop was least certain
(those in Morocco, Egypt and Russia).
Other studies have linked broad perceptions of the quality of companies to superior share
price performance. In a study of five year cumulative returns of Fortune Magazine's
survey of 'most admired firms', Antunovich et al. found that those "most admired" had an
average return of 125%, whilst the 'least admired' firms returned 80%. In a separate study
Business Week enlisted institutional investors and 'experts' to assist in differentiating
between boards with good and bad governance and found that companies with the highest
rankings had the highest financial returns.
On the other hand, research into the relationship between specific corporate governance
controls and firm performance has been mixed and often weak. The following examples
are illustrative.

Board composition
Some researchers have found support for the relationship between frequency of meetings
and profitability. Others have found a negative relationship between the proportion of
external directors and firm performance, while others found no relationship between
external board membership and performance. In a recent paper Bhagat and Black found
that companies with more independent boards do not perform better than other
companies. It is unlikely that board composition has a direct impact on firm performance.

Remuneration/Compensation
The results of previous research on the relationship between firm performance and
executive compensation have failed to find consistent and significant relationships
between executives' remuneration and firm performance. Low average levels of pay-
performance alignment do not necessarily imply that this form of governance control is
inefficient. Not all firms experience the same levels of agency conflict, and external and
internal monitoring devices may be more effective for some than for others.
Some researchers have found that the largest CEO performance incentives came from
ownership of the firm's shares, while other researchers found that the relationship
between share ownership and firm performance was dependent on the level of ownership.
The results suggest that increases in ownership above 20% cause management to become
more entrenched, and less interested in the welfare of their shareholders.
Some argue that firm performance is positively associated with share option plans and
that these plans direct managers' energies and extend their decision horizons toward the
long-term, rather than the short-term, performance of the company. However, that point
of view came under substantial criticism circa in the wake of various security scandals
including mutual fund timing episodes and, in particular, the backdating of option grants
as documented by University of Iowa academic Erik Lie and reported by James Blander
and Charles Forelle of the Wall Street Journal.
Even before the negative influence on public opinion caused by the 2006 backdating
scandal, use of options faced various criticisms. A particularly forceful and long running
argument concerned the interaction of executive options with corporate stock repurchase
programs. Numerous authorities (including U.S. Federal Reserve Board economist
Weisbenner) determined options may be employed in concert with stock buybacks in a
manner contrary to shareholder interests. These authors argued that, in part, corporate
stock buybacks for U.S. Standard & Poors 500 companies surged to a $500 billion annual
rate in late 2006 because of the impact of options. A compendium of academic works on
the option/buyback issue is included in the study Scandalby author M. Gumport issued in
2006.
A combination of accounting changes and governance issues led options to become a less
popular means of remuneration as 2006 progressed, and various alternative
implementations of buybacks surfaced to challenge the dominance of "open market" cash
buybacks as the preferred means of implementing a share repurchase plan.