The Star reported that the Corporate governance score of Malaysian public listed companies (PLCs) saw a slight improvement over last year, according to the Minority Shareholder Watchdog Group’s (MSWG) Malaysian Corporate Governance Index (CGI) 2011.
The score for the top 100 companies in the index was 66.9%, up one percentage point over last year, while the average base score on compliance with best practices for all the 864 PLCs assessed increased to 57.19% from 55.6% in 2010.
In terms of board of directors, 82% or 708 companies separated the roles between chairman and chief executive officer. This percentage is comparable to FTSE companies and is much higher than US-based Standard & Poor’s companies.
A further 35.2% had independent directors as chairman, up from 33.5% in 2010. The index also found that 42.5% had boards comprising half or more of independent directors compared with 40.2% last year.
On female board representation, MSWG said: “It is not encouraging to note that the percentage of women directors on boards had been almost stagnant at 8% and has dropped to 7% in the top 100 companies.
“Therefore, more needs to be done by companies to make a conscious effort to include gender diversity in boardrooms.”
The index found that there was an average of 9% foreigners on boards of the top 100 companies and 8% for the top 10 government-linked corporations (GLCs).
The average age at the top 100 companies is 58, similar with the top 10 GLCs.
On the disclosure of directors’ remuneration by individual directors, the index revealed that only 8.3% did so, up from 5.6% in 2010. The MSWG said many were not prepared to disclose the details, despite it being a best practice recommendation under the Malaysian Code on Corporate Governance as well as in other jurisdictions.
The overall average remuneration for executive directors was about RM824,000 per annum, versus the RM3.2mil per annum given to directors in the financial sectors.
For non-executive directors, the overall average remuneration per director is about RM100,000 per year.
Non-executive directors in the financial sector, again, received the highest average remuneration per director at around RM250,000 per year.
( Adapted from 'The Star Online News).
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