Abstract
Although somewhat simplistic, this highlights the importance of processes that companies should institute and implement to ensure that effective practices transcend the various levels of the organisation. These were viewed at the time as necessary responses to what was considered a lack of managerial oversight which led to the spectacular corporate collapses of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, Coloroll, the Polly Peck Group and Maxwell Communication Corporation in the late 1980s and early 1990s. These collapses not only resulted in substantial financial losses to shareholders, employees, creditors, investors as well as the government—they were also perceived as posing considerable challenges to the integrity and reputation of the City of London as an international financial centre.
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Notes
- 1.
See Report of the Committee on The Financial Aspects of Corporate Governance also commonly known as The Cadbury Report (1 December 1992) at paragraph 2.5 available at http://www.ecgi.org/codes/documents/cadbury.pdf (accessed 30 October 2016).
- 2.
Cadbury Report, paragraph 2.5.
- 3.
Cadbury Report, paragraph 1.10.
- 4.
Cadbury Report at paragraph 2.8 which states that ‘The Committee’s objective is to help to raise the standards of corporate governance and the level of confidence in financial reporting and auditing by setting out clearly what it sees as the respective responsibilities of those involved and what it believes is expected of them.’
- 5.
See e.g. European Corporate Governance Institute—Index of Codes available at http://www.ecgi.org/codes/all_codes.php (accessed 30 October 2016).
- 6.
The OECD Principles provide an indispensable and globally recognised benchmark for assessing and improving corporate governance and have been adopted as one of the Financial Stability Board’s key standards for sound financial systems. They have been used by the World Bank Group in more than 60 country reviews worldwide and they also serve as the basis for the guidelines on corporate governance of banks issued by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision: see G20/OECD Principles of Corporate Governance available at https://www.oecd.org/corporate/principles-corporate-governance.htm (accessed 30 October 2016).
- 7.
The full title for the Sarbanes-Oxley Act which was enacted in July 2002 and commonly known by its acronym ‘SOX’ is Public Company Accounting Reform and Investor Protection Act. The full text of SOX is available at https://www.sec.gov/about/laws/soa2002.pdf (accessed 30 October 2016).
- 8.
The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act which was enacted in January 2010 is available at https://www.sec.gov/about/laws/wallstreetreform-cpa.pdf (accessed 30 October 2016).
- 9.
Available at https://www.sec.gov/news/speech/spch032403whd.htm (accessed 30 October 2016).
- 10.
See Monks and Minow (2011), p. xxii.
- 11.
See http://2016.icgl.org.au (accessed 30 October 2016).
- 12.
See Institute of Directors Southern Africa, ‘King IV: Report on Corporate Governance for South Africa 2016’, p. 7 available at http://c.ymcdn.com/sites/www.iodsa.co.za/resource/resmgr/king_iv/King_IV_Report/IoDSA_King_IV_Report_-_WebVe.pdf (accessed 3 November 2016).
- 13.
King IV: Report on Corporate Governance for South Africa 2016, p. 11. ‘Corporate’ refers to organisations that are incorporated to form legal entities separate from their founders and therefore applies to all forms of incorporation whether as company, voluntary association, retirement fund, trust, legislated entity or others.
- 14.
King IV: Report on Corporate Governance for South Africa 2016, p. 4.
- 15.
King IV: Report on Corporate Governance for South Africa 2016, p. 6.
- 16.
See e.g. Commonsense Corporate Governance Principles available at http://www.governanceprinciples.org (accessed 3 November 2016).
Reference
Monks RAG, Minow N (2011) Corporate governance. Wiley, p xxii
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We would like to thank copy editor/writer Jacqui O’Leary, for her assistance in extracting core aspects from each chapter that enabled us to complete this overview.
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du Plessis, J.J., Low, C.K. (2017). Corporate Governance Codes Under the Spotlight. In: du Plessis, J., Low, C. (eds) Corporate Governance Codes for the 21st Century. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51868-8_1
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