The unfinished business of corporate governance in 2015

THE year 2015 has been a momentous cornerstone for corporate governance in Singapore. From the corporate angle, this is the year when all listed companies would have moved into the new regime of the revised Code of Corporate Governance of 2012 in their reporting. From the performance perspective, going by our nationally-published indicator - Governance & Transparency Index (GTI) - companies collectively reached an all-time high this year.

Yet, there are outstanding issues that have to be resolved, especially from the compliance end. Our regulator, the Singapore Exchange (SGX), has recently been extremely vigorous in levelling up many companies in their accounting practices. In particular, a comprehensive study is underway to identify areas of non-compliance, particularly where there aren't adequate explanations.

The final frontier in good corporate governance enforcement is probably to strengthen the comply-or-explain mechanism.