Category: Other News

Our Representative Director, Nicholas Benes, was interviewed by Bloomberg Tokyo with regard to recent corporate scandals in Japan. You can watch the video at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqf6gq1dCgk

Everyone has probably seen the letter sent by Mr. Woodford to Chairman Kikukawa on October 11, soon before the former was summarily fired as Representative Director (but of course, he is still a director at present). But for those who have not read it, here it is:

To say the obvious: Japanese companies need truly independent oversight, – by actual board members who can vote, and fit a legal definition of independence. Here, the words actual, vote, and legal definition need to be stressed, because presently in Japan:

Unfortunately, Olympus is just the latest in a long stream of incidents that show that it is high time Japan made major changes to its corporate governance regime.

What will cause ISS to recommend withhold or against the election of compensation committee members as a result of poor say-on-pay votes in 2012? A hint lies in the just-released ISS draft voting policies for 2012. ISS is looking for input from the corporate governance community until October 31st.

Actually it was my own grand-uncle, Norbert Wiener, who is the MIT professor Dr. Turnbull refers to in his paper (in the previous post)as the father of cybernetics, the core concepts upon which automated device and computers are based. Wiener thought cybernetics could also be applied in other areas, such as society in general. A key aspect of cybernetics was the stablizing or destablizing effect of feedback loops.

(Excerpt) LAWS OF NATURE

Over billions of years nature has evolved sustainable systems of governance based on survival of the fittest. Living creatures cannot sustain their existence without self-regulation and self-governance. This was achieved before the existence of humans, their governments, laws, regulations, regulators, codes, auditors, independent directors, rating agencies, law courts and manifold layers of experts, advisors and even meetings like we are having today!

Abstract and Main Conclusion: This paper investigates whether market players appreciate socially responsible firms better than conventional ones with the view on corporate social responsibility factors.

The Working Group believes that market efficiency can be enhanced by encouraging financial analysts to pay attention not only to conventional financial factors but also to non-financial factors such as environmental, social, and governance (ESG) criteria and thereby evaluating true corporate value. Thus, we conducted a statistical analysis of the relationship between corporate social performance (CSP) and corporate financial performance (CFP).

As you can see from the carefully hidden little section at the lower right of the Discussion Forum page, BDTI is preparing a section on ESG and responsible investment. (Please note that his is still a work in progress; so any ideas and additional information are welcome, as longas you help do the work tosummarize, organize etc., as this is a user-generated contents site….)