In theory, board members in Poland are independent from executive directors. In companies where stocks are owned by the state and where state or municipalities delegate board members, boards are strongly influenced by executive directors. Zimbabwe, Hungary and Thailand require full disclosure of conflicts of interests. Turkey does not have strict rules for the disclosure of conflicts of interests and, in most cases, in Nigeria, South Korea, Philippines and Indonesia, personal interests on issues before the boards are not disclosed. In Poland, members of the boards cannot participate at the boards of two competing companies, but other conflicts of interests are not always disclosed.
Transparency is one of the key issues in corporate governance.
Turkey, Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Egypt, Poland, Hungary and Thailand practice a reasonable level of transparency in their Board meeting process. Indonesia and Korea have unsatisfactory level of transparency although in Korea legislation is being introduced to address this problem. As far as audits, all of the responding countries have mechanisms by which publicly traded companies have to submit to an outside audit. The business associations and think tanks that responded to the survey realize the importance of developing sound corporate governance and have initiated programs for advancing the issue. The Federation of Egyptian Industries, for example, will include a corporate governance awareness campaign as part of its program in 1999.