A previous post on this Blog by Mr. Jayant Thakur raises valid issues regarding corporate governance and government-owned companies. Although I am in agreement with the position stated, it may be useful to highlight certain other complexities this matter gives rise to. I initially began by writing a comment to his post, but owing to its length, decided to post it separately as a supplement. Here...
SEBI moves to tighten insider trading norms by prohibiting opposing transactions
In an earlier post, Mihir had remarked that while arguments for legalizing insider trading are interesting, there is a long way to go before they are actually accepted by legal systems. SEBI’s recent move to tighten insider trading norms is a case in point. ET reports that SEBI will soon amend its regulations to ban insiders from any opposing transaction within a period of six months. ‘Insider’...
History Repeats Itself: Whither Governance? (Part 3)
In two previous posts (here and here), we discussed the several corporate governance issues that have been accentuated on account of the current financial turmoil emanating from the U.S. In this post, we examine some of the differences between corporate structures and governance in the U.S. and India. In India, companies predominantly display concentrated shareholding structures (as opposed to...
History Repeats Itself: Whither Governance? (Part 2)
In the background of the boardroom failures discussed in the previous post, it is useful to explore some of the factors involving U.S. corporate governance that may have led to this situation. 1. Dispersed Shareholding and Lack of Oversight One of the key problems involving a dispersed shareholding model (that is prevalent largely in the U.S. and U.K.) is that the individual shareholders have...
History Repeats Itself: Whither Governance?
Much has already been stated in the press about the current financial crisis that has rocked not only the U.S. economy, but also the global financial system, and indeed the magnitude of this crisis will ensure that a lot more will be said in the future. Here we focus on one aspect of the crisis, which is the perceptible failure of corporate governance involving large companies. In a provocatively...
Sarbanex-Oxley & the Subprime Crisis
One of our readers points to this column Did Sarbanes-Oxley miss a trick during subprime? in the Mint, where the author observes that the subprime crisis occurred despite the existence of stringent legislation such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX). However, unlike past corporate governance failures such as Enron & WorldCom (that that triggered the passage of SOX), there has been no allegations...
Governance Trends Among Indian Conglomerates
In a column in the Financial Express, Rajesh Chakrabarti sets out some observations regarding corporate governance trends that are affecting Indian companies (particularly conglomerates), based on academic research. These include concentrated ownership (even among large listed companies), lower than desired levels of board supervision, earnings management and the skewed nature of executive...
Inconsistency in Accounting Norms
There have been news reports lately that bring to the fore the inconsistency between the accounting standards issued by the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) and the requirements in Schedule VI of the Companies Act, 1956 in relation to exchange losses incurred by companies on foreign currency-denominated transactions (see here and here). A Business Standard editorial goes beyond...
Corporate Governance in Banks
With the recent credit crisis weakening the financial position of several banks world-over, the question that is being repeatedly posed is whether the boards of directors of these banks could have foreseen the oncoming crisis or whether they should have taken steps to forestall a slide in their financial position. Fingers are being pointed not only at the executive management of these banks, but...
Oil Price Rise: Shareholders vs. Consumers
The spike in the price of oil has created a peculiar situation for the Indian oil companies that are in the public sector. These public sector undertakings (PSUs) are predominantly owned by the Government, with a portion of the shares (usually a minority) held by public shareholders. The shares of these entities are listed on stock exchanges, which subject them to norms of corporate governance...
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