It is obviously multi-dimensional in nature, touching on legal, historical, regulatory, behavioural and even cultural aspects of corporate practices. Nevertheless, the fact that we have rapidly moved from the Cadbury recommendations of 1992 to draft OECD Guidelines for Corporate Governance today means that we have come a long way towards understanding the nature of the concept and the issues. Increasingly, we are moving towards a global consensus of what constitutes principles of good governance and a code of best practice. Accountability - the checks and balances within the corporate structure that ensures that performance is measured against the benchmarks and objectives. The common glue amongst all the above is information, the raw material of markets.
Transparency requires timely and readily accessibility of relevant information.
But information has to be measured, classified and analyzed, requiring standards or benchmarks of measurement, valuation and judgement. Moreover, there is a process of accountability by which performance is judged against these benchmarks, in which the agents are rewarded or sanctioned by the stakeholders. Modern markets could not have achieved their present level of liquidity, depth and volatility without the rise of information technology. Hence we need to look at the role of transparency, information technology and governance. The practical recommendations we made applied not only to the national authorities, international financial institutions, but also the private sector.