The October edition of “The hub” brings you a factbook from OECD for 2023 covering institutional, legal and regulatory frameworks from a number of countries/jurisdictions for learning from the practice for the adoption of the good corporate governance practices.

The G20/OECD Principles of Corporate Governance have an important role to play by providing guidance to help policy makers evaluate and improve the legal, regulatory and institutional framework for corporate governance, with a view to supporting market confidence and integrity, economic efficiency, sustainable growth and financial stability.

As capital markets and corporations continue to evolve and respond to new opportunities and challenges, the Factbook provides an essential tool to help policy makers and regulators stay abreast of the changing corporate governance landscape, and to consider how policies and practices can be adapted to remain effective.

The core information in the Factbook derives from OECD thematic reviews on how jurisdictions address major corporate governance challenges such as board practices (including remuneration); the role of institutional investors; related party transactions and minority shareholder rights; board member nomination and election; supervision and enforcement; frameworks for risk management and audit; and company groups. Additional sections address the capital market landscape, including ownership patterns; data on stock exchanges and their market activities; and the institutional and regulatory landscape.

Under this latest edition of Factbook, New sections have been added on corporate sustainability, covering sustainability-related disclosure frameworks, board responsibilities for reviewing or approving sustainability-related issues, and regulation on ESG rating and index providers. There are also new data and sections on the legal framework for virtual and hybrid meetings and for company groups.

The Factbook is divided into four chapters:

1) Global markets, corporate ownership and sustainability;
This chapter focus on Global trends in equity markets and the listed company landscape, Initial public offerings trends, Secondary public offerings trends, Changes in the corporate ownership and investor landscape, prevalence of concentrated ownership, Corporate sustainability etc.

2) The corporate governance and institutional framework;

This chapter focus on regulatory framework for corporate governance

3) The rights of shareholders and key ownership functions; and

This chapter focus on Notification of general meetings and information provided to shareholders, Shareholders’ right to request a meeting and to place items on the agenda, Shareholder voting, Virtual and hybrid shareholder meetings, Related party transactions, Takeover bid rules, roles and responsibilities of institutional investors etc.

4) The corporate board of directors

This chapter focus on Basic board structures and independence, Board-level committees, Auditor independence, accountability and oversight, Board nomination and election, Board and key executive remuneration, Gender composition on boards and in senior management etc.

Each chapter offers a narrative overview, which helps to provide an overall picture of the main tendencies and variations in approaches taken by different jurisdictions.

Click here to access the report 

(IICA acknowledge the ownership / authorship of the research report and republishing the same only for educational purpose only.)