Doing Governance Better in 2024

I caught up with an old friend recently, Dr Loh Leng Hua, who is a scholar in corporate governance. We talked about our favourite subject and the conversation led me to my own musings.

Reflecting on the past seven years of my role as an independent board director, my approach to governance of companies has changed several times. I have learned a lot more through doing the work, being in the trenches , than by reading books and attending training sessions. No doubt, the academic learning is invaluable especially when I’m keeping up with the demands of the times and the vocation, but it is through the practice of governance that I have matured as a director. This next series of six mini articles reveals my current thoughts, and I invite you to be my partner in doing governance better.

I look forward to hearing your views.

Happy Year of the Dragon!

Location: Malaysia

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Risk Assessment: An essential tool for better decision-making

Image
By Tunku Alina and Anita Menon How familiar to you is the following scenario? It’s the start of the year, and the board has been booked for a strategy day. Slides decks have been shared but they were obviously rushed with many changes leading right up to the hour of the CEO’s briefing. Inevitably, an indepth description of the year ahead as part of a rolling 3-year midterm strategy, or a totally fresh 3-year plan is trotted out. The CEO gives an overview of the past year, high level aspirations for the coming year, and then the individual business heads would present their parts. There would be a passing comment on market and competitive landscape. Other than in the financial services sector, the Chief Risk Officer is rarely included. I have many times asked why the Risk Officer is not invited, or no formal risk assessment of the strategy or annual plan is given but it seems that this falls on deaf ears. I got my answer once, outside during an informal lunch with the board an...
Read more

The Value of Sustainability Initiatives

Image
I recently participated in a panel at the IVAS-IVSC conference on Valuation, the topic of discussion was how to value sustainability efforts. It was an interesting question that I had been mulling over since I first began my own sustainability journey. Value is subjective, much like beauty it is in the eyes of the beholder. So in valuing sustainability , one would have to determine who the valuation is for, and the scope thereof. One of the speakers also mentioned an added complexity, in that some companies have already incorporated sustainability into their strategy and thus teasing out the value of sustainability per se becomes tricky. In my work as a board director, over the past 18 months alone, I have come across at least 5 instances where sustainability has appeared as an intangible but powerful affect. Three would require valuation specialists, the other two, market forces. The first is in the acquisition of a listed company, and the allocation of price for the ...
Read more