"Companies wouldn't want to be in the non-top 100 good governance list, because you want to be in the most prestigious part of the stock exchange".
To encourage this competition, this Article recommends that the United States rationalize its currently schizophrenic and inconsistent approach to the foreign issuer, which approach sometimes waives all governance listing requirements for foreign issuers and sometimes subjects them to mandatory and incompatible governance standards.
That's in part because many of the changes on investors' traditional governance wish lists, such as directors being elected by a majority vote, have already been widely adopted by big companies.
In October last year, MEDEF and AFEP, two business associations, jointly published a report on the governance of listed companies.
The Italian stock exchange, seeking to reassure investors after a run of scandals that culminated in the spectacular collapse of the food group Parmalat two years ago, introduced a new disciplinary code on Tuesday aimed at strengthening corporate governance among listed companies.
As many of the key corporate governance practices listed above have been adopted by close to 90percentt (or more) of large market capitalization firms, proponents are turning their attention to governance topics, such as independent board chairs and written consent rights, that boards have been slower to address.
But they will be affected by what goes on within those walls, just as they will reap any benefits of better governance in listed companies.
When the United Kingdom added to its "comply or explain" approach to corporate governance for listed businesses with a "Stewardship" Code in 2010, its independent regulator the Financial Reporting Council (FRC) was in part responding to criticism about the role of institutional investors in the run-up to the financial crisis.
Instead, these commodity-producing giants seem to be dogged by run-ins with governments, questions about their track record on safety and wrangles about boardroom governance and their listing structure.
WHATEVER your notion of what constitutes good corporate governance for a listed company, having an important executive arrested is a problem.
