The seven-member core committee formed by the Institute of Company Secretaries of India (ICSI) in the aftermath of the Satyam scam will come out with its set of recommendations to strengthen the corporate governance norms within the next six months. The committee, headed by Kayoor Bakshi, is debating on areas like ways of enhancing the disclosure and transparency norms, the effectiveness of the board and is it time to introduce performance evaluation of independent directors in India. “Around 150 independent directors have resigned from different company boards after the Satyam scandal broke out,” claimed NK Jain, secretary and chief executive officer, ICSI. “Around a month after the Satyam issue the Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) and Punjab National Bank (PNB) approached us to conduct a training for the independent directors on its boards,” Jain added.
ICSI has finished training 61 independent directors of LIC and 22 from PNB who are on the boards of various companies. The core committee recommendations will first go to the ICSI council and then to the ministry of corporate affairs. “We are trying to map the best international practices in the process. On paper, India has one of the best corporate governance practices,” said ICSI President Datla Hanumanta Raju.
Meanwhile, Councils of Company Secretaries of at least 13 to 14 nations have come together to press for the need to have a global body with representations from developing countries that will be able to lobby with multinational organisations for making their voices felt in terms of professional guidelines and directives. There had been three serial meetings in Goa, Kuala Lumpur, and London, respectively, last year and a steering committee had been formed, Jain, who is also the secretary of the International Federation of Company Secretaries, a body formed to lay down standards for the profession, informed. “Already letters of intent have been floated by the councils of around 13 to 14 countries, and the committee will meet in India in May to evolve the framework for this global body. We expect to form the international body by the end of this year,” he said. First on the agenda of this upcoming global body for company secretaries is to take up the issue of having a separate division to deal with issues related to corporate governance and secretarial advisory services under the World Trade Organization (WTO) sectoral classification of services. “The new body would take up the issue with the WTO secretariat,” Jain said.
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