Professional Documents
Culture Documents
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, the board of directors, employees,
customers,creditors, suppliers, 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 governmentpassed the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, intending to restore public confidence in
corporate governance.
Contents
• 1 Definition
• 2 Legal environment
• 3 History - United States
o 3.1 Impact of Corporate Governance
o 3.2 Role of Institutional Investors
• 4 Parties to corporate governance
• 5 Principles
• 6 Mechanisms and controls
o 6.1 Internal corporate governance controls
o 6.2 External corporate governance controls
• 7 Systemic problems of corporate governance
• 8 Role of the accountant
• 9 Regulation
o 9.1 Rules versus principles
o 9.2 Enforcement
o 9.3 Action Beyond Obligation
o 9.4 Proposals
• 10 Corporate governance models around the world
o 10.1 Anglo-American Model
• 11 Codes and guidelines
• 12 Ownership structures
• 13 Corporate governance and firm performance
o 13.1 Board composition
o 13.2 Remuneration/Compensation
• 14 See also
• 15 References
• 16 Further reading
• 17 External links
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 business ethics and a moral duty. See
also Corporate Social Entrepreneurship regarding employees who are driven by their sense
of integrity (moral conscience) and duty to society. This notion stems from traditional
philosophical ideas of virtue (or self governance) and represents a "bottom-up" approach to
corporate governance (agency) which supports the more obvious "top-down" (systems and
processes, i.e. structural) perspective.
Legal environment
In the United States, corporations are governed under common law, the Model Business
Corporation Act, and Delaware law since Delaware, as of 2004, was the domicile for the
majority of publicly-traded corporations. Individual rules for corporations are based upon
the corporate charter and, less authoritatively, the corporate bylaws. In the United States,
shareholders cannot initiate changes in the corporate charter although they can initiate
changes to the corporate bylaws. In the UK, however, the analogous corporate constitutional
documents (the memorandum and articles of association) can be modified by a supermajority
(75%) of shareholders. Shareholders can initiate 'precatory proposals' on various initiatives,
but the results are nonbinding. Precatory proposals which have received majority support
from shareholders, even for several consecutive years, have historically been rejected by the
board of directors.
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:
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." However it should be noted that a corporation should cease to exist if that is in
the best interests of its stakeholders. Perpetuation for its own sake may be counterproductive.
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.
competition
debt covenants
demand for and assessment of performance information (especially financial
statements)
government regulations
managerial labour market
media pressure
takeovers
Demand for information: 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.
Monitoring costs: 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.
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.
Regulation
Rules versus principles
Rules are typically thought to be simpler to follow than principles, demarcating a clear line
between acceptable and unacceptable behaviour. Rules also reduce discretion on the part of
individual managers or auditors.
In practice rules can be more complex than principles. They may be ill-equipped to deal with
new types of transactions not covered by the code. Moreover, even if clear rules are followed,
one can still find a way to circumvent their underlying purpose - this is harder to achieve if one
is bound by a broader principle.
Principles on the other hand is a form of self regulation. It allows the sector to determine what
standards are acceptable or unacceptable. It also pre-empts over zealous legislations that
might not be practical.
Enforcement
Enforcement can affect the overall credibility of a regulatory system. They both deter bad
actors and level the competitive playing field. Nevertheless, greater enforcement is not always
better, for taken too far it can dampen valuable risk-taking. In practice, however, this is largely
a theoretical, as opposed to a real, risk. There are various integrated governance, risk and
compliance solutions available to capture information in order to evaluate risk and to identify
gaps in the organization’s principles and processes. This type of software is based on project
management style methodologies such as the ABACUS methodology which attempts to unify
the management of these areas, rather than treat them as separate entities.
Proposals
The book Money for Nothing suggests importing from England the concept of term limits to
prevent independent directors from becoming too close to management and demanding that
directors invest a meaningful amount of their own money (not grants of stock or options that
they receive free) to ensure that the directors' interests align with those of average
investors. Another proposal is for the government to allow poorly-managed businesses to go
bankrupt, since after a filing, directors have to cover more of their own legal bills and are
frequently sued by bankruptcy trustees as well as investors.
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.
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.
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 profitability, while others found no relationship between external board
membership and profitability. In a recent paper Bhagat and Black found that companies with
more independent boards are not more profitable than other companies. It is unlikely that
board composition has a direct impact on profitability, one measure of 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 Scandal by 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.
The Supervisory Board and the Executive Board endorse the main corporate governance principles as
set out in the principles and best practice provisions of the Corporate Governance Code amended by
the Monitoring Committee in December 2008.
No detailed adjustments to the Corporate Governance Policy were made in 2009 in response to the new
code. TenCate already largely complied with the Code or intends to comply with the amended principles
of the Code. As was the case with the previous Code, for the amended version there will be a number of
exceptions applicable within TenCate, relating mainly to the nature and size of the company. They do
not affect the basic principles of good corporate management and integrity.
The main points on which the new Code has been tightened are as follows:
• Greater emphasis has been placed on the importance of internal risk control and supervision
systems in the new code. The Supervisory Board is already closely involved in the strategy.
The Board supervises the quality of both the internal risk control and responsibility for it. In
material terms, the new Code will not give rise to any major adjustments in the risk control
policy as the current policy is deemed to be sufficient in combination with reporting lines that
have been refined over time;
• The remuneration policy for directors is based on the policy as approved at the general
meeting of shareholders of 24 March 2005. No adjustment is being made to the remuneration
policy at present;
• TenCate’s option scheme contributes to a long-term approach in view of its conditionality. The
scheme is based partly on (individual) non-financial objectives;
• Stakeholders have an increasing interest in the current principles of socially responsible
enterprise. In the exercise of the supervisory role, the Supervisory Board considers the social
aspects of enterprise that are relevant to the company.
The Executive Board’s statement on the internal risk and control systems can be found in the annual
report. The corporate governance structure is based on the voluntary application of the two-tier board
structure.
The main elements of this are:
• The financial statements are adopted by the general meeting of shareholders;
• Supervisory directors are appointed by the general meeting of shareholders on the basis of
nominations by the Supervisory Board. The profile of the members of the Supervisory Board is
first discussed at the general meeting of shareholders at the time of adoption and on each
subsequent modification;
• The general meeting of shareholders and the works council can recommend persons to the
Supervisory Board for nomination as supervisory directors;
• In the case of one-third of the members of the Supervisory Board, the Supervisory Board will in
principle place in nomination the name of a person recommended by the works council (works
council’s reinforced right of recommendation);
• In the event of an outright majority of the votes, the general meeting of shareholders
representing at least one-third of the issued share capital may reject the nomination by the
Supervisory Board;
• The members of the Executive Board are appointed by the general meeting of shareholders on
the basis of a binding nomination by the Supervisory Board.