Corporate governance in the spotlight

Company directors patting themselves on the back is always slightly disconcerting. When the subject of their congratulation is corporate governance, it is even more unsettling.

The Institute of Directors yesterday published “research” – an online survey – which said that a “significant majority of directors say standards of corporate governance have improved in recent years”.

More than four in five (81 per cent) believe that standards have improved in recent years, while 7 in 10 (71 per cent ) said that directors and boards had learned from governance failings of the past,

While the financial services sector may not hit those giddy heights, it is deemed to have good to very good standards of corporate governance by over half (55 per cent) of the directors surveyed.

Of course, this is an area where substantial regulation has been introduced in recent years to address past failings, the report notes.

However, even as the findings were being published, Ciarán Hancock was writing in this newspaper about the Central Bank being less than happy with the standard of regulatory returns from companies within the financial services sector – in particular, the 400 business operating as authorised investment firms, in fund services and in stockbroking.

Following a review of 35 per cent of the firms in these areas, it noted that “a number of the firms had inadequate or no procedures for the production of regulatory returns” resulting in a lack of proper controls and oversight in the production process.

The IoD acknowledgement that “who you know” remains a factor in securing directorships – an issue for 70 per cent of respondents – showed there remains room for improvement.

Maura Quinn, chief executive of the directors' institute, was keen to take "a number of positives" from the survey but sensibly added that "lessons continue to be learnt in the wake of governance failings".

Only 259 of its IoD’s 2,000-plus members contributed to the survey earlier this month.