Branding corporate governance

IT is unfortunate that not many companies capitalise on their strong corporate governance practices even though the latter should be an integral part of their overall strategy of branding and positioning.

This observation was made by John Lim at the recent launch of the Asean Corporate Governance Scorecard 2014 results. Mr Lim, who is Singapore's nominated corporate governance expert to the Asean Scorecard expert group, said: "Many of the Singaporean companies have not scored as well as they should as they did not fully disclose their corporate governance practices. Corporate governance is like justice, it must not only be done but also be seen to be done; hence the need for good and full disclosure."

This lack of disclosure by companies of even their laudable attributes could be one of the reasons why SGX- listed shares are under-appreciated. Currently, around half of listed companies are trading at, or below, book value.