The Asian Corporate Governance Association (ACGA) have recently published “Awakening Governance: The evolution of corporate governance in China.
This report is an independent and objective review of the development and current state of corporate governance in China. It seeks to explain China’s unique system of corporate governance to foreign investors and the relevance of emerging global corporate governance best practices to China-listed companies and domestic institutional investors. It contains a series of practical recommendations to regulators, companies and investors for improvement. The main part of the report examines “corporate governance with Chinese characteristics”. It contains chapters on the role of Party organisations, boards of directors, supervisory boards, independent directors, and audit committees and the challenges facing each.
Other chapters cover “ESG Reporting and Investing”, “M&A with Chinese characteristics” and there are case studies on five companies: Sinopec, ICBC, Vanke, Minsheng Bank, and Tencent. The report is based upon the results of two original surveys carried out by ACGA in Q3 2017, the first on 155 foreign institutional investors and the second on 182 China-listed companies.
It also examines the similarities and differences between state-owned enterprises and privately-owned enterprises, finding that privately owned enterprises are more similar to state-owned enterprises in governance terms than is often appreciated.
The report can be downloaded click here