We’ve just celebrated our 50th issue of Governance Watch, written by Dina Medland and we’ve learnt many things from covering the news. Governance Watch started as a simple idea – to give anyone involved with boardrooms, a place to read and digest the latest articles and headlines in one place. It’s important for people who shape corporate governance to consider the wider business landscape and to stay informed with events that may affect their decisions.
The reprieve of KPMG, cleared of misconduct by the audit watchdog the Financial Reporting Council (FRC) in relation to its work for the UK lender HBOS will not go unmarked. It is likely to take its toll in the ongoing battle for public trust in the financial services sector and in those responsible for its regulation.
UK plc boardrooms have displayed a tendency to treat the issue of cyber security a bit like a bad smell – ignore it and hope that it goes away quickly. But the unprecedented worldwide cyberattack last weekend that spanned 150 nations and infected over 200,000 computers has quickly made ‘ransomware’ an everyday word, and highlighted the need for cyber security to be at the top of every boardroom’s agenda.
Corporate Governance has been called ‘the very essence of a business.’ It can hit the media headlines in multiple ways – but few of them are likely to be beneficial to the business in question. Because by the time it has made the headlines, the odds are that corporate governance has failed at some level.
In Governance Watch we regularly bring you some of those recent headlines around governance, in order to raise an early flag for their wider implications for each listed business.
