ASEAN Corporate Governance Scorecard: Country Reports and Assessments 2012-2013

Corporate governance principles provide guidance on how corporations should operate and can be useful to attract foreign investments. In the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), countries use national methodologies to assess corporate governance performance of publicly listed companies.

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) in partnership with the ASEAN Capital Markets Forum have jointly developed an ASEAN methodology of corporate governance assessment using a scorecard system that is based on international best practices and that encourages publicly listed companies to go beyond national legislation requirements.

This inaugural report is a compilation of corporate governance assessments of publicly listed companies in six ASEAN countries—Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Viet Nam—using the Scorecard. The assessment is useful to improve corporate governance in the region collectively and to brand ASEAN as an asset class.

Recommendations

For future implementation, four recommendations can be considered to keep the momentum of the initiative and take it to the next level:

• assessment using the Scorecard should be a continuous process, which will require several iterations before the Scorecard becomes self-sustaining;
• different countries should lead the initiative by rotation;
• while assessment and ranking has its own value, especially given that good corporate governance practices increase shareholder value at least in the medium term, opportunities for synergy with other regional capital market initiatives should also be explored; and
• the ASEAN Scorecard can also be a reference point for the development of national corporate governance frameworks.