Awakening Governance: The evolution of corporate governance in China

On 24 July 2018, ACGA published a report, titled “Awakening Governance: The evolution of corporate governance in China”. It is an independent and objective review of the development and current state of corporate governance in China. It seeks to explain China’s unique system of corporate governance (CG) to foreign investors and the relevance of emerging global CG best practices to China-listed companies and domestic institutional investors. It contains a series of practical recommendations to regulators, companies and investors for improvement.

The main part of the report examines “CG with Chinese characteristics”. It contains chapters on the role of Party organisations, boards of directors, supervisory boards, independent directors, and audit committees—and challenges facing each. It also examines the similarities and differences between state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and privately owned enterprises (POEs), finding that POEs are more similar to SOEs in governance terms than is often appreciated. Other chapters cover “ESG Reporting and Investing”, “M&A with Chinese characteristics” and case studies on five companies: Sinopec, ICBC, Vanke, Minsheng Bank, and Tencent.

An important feature of “Awakening Governance” is the results of two original surveys carried out by ACGA in Q3 2017, the first on 155 foreign institutional investors and the second on 182 China-listed companies. Further depth is added to the text through a series of interviews with 12 governance experts, directors, board secretaries, investors and others.

治理在觉醒: 中国公司治理进化史

《治理在觉醒:中国公司治理进化史》,对中国公司治理的发展历程和现状进行了独立而客观的梳理,并提出了一系列切实可行的改进建议。报告提供中文和英文两个版本,试图为外国投资者解释中国独特的公司治理体系,同时也为中国的上市公司和机构投资者介绍新兴的全球公司治理最佳实践。它还包含一系列向监管机构,公司和投资者提出改进的实用建议。

报告的主体部分研究了“中国特色公司治理”,其中分章节探讨了党组织、董事会、监事会、独立董事和审计委员会在公司治理中发挥的作用,以及各自面临的挑战。此外,本章还分析了国有企业与私营企业之间的异同,并得出结论:在公司治理问题上,私营企业与国有企业的差别并不像外界以为得那样明显。报告的其他章节还先后讨论了“环境、社会和治理(ESG)报告和投资”和“中国特色并购”,并对5家公司进行了案例分析:中石化、工商银行、万科、民生银行和腾讯。

报告还纳入了亚洲公司治理协会在2017年第三季度完成的两项原创调查的结果。亚洲公司治理协会分别针对152位外国机构投资者和182位中国上市公司的高层进行了两项有关中国公司治理的问卷调查,并对收到的回复进行了整理分析。报告各章节还穿插了对12位治理专家、公司董事、董秘、投资者等各领域专业人士的专访,进一步加重了报告的分量。

Other Thematic Research