The ultimate goal of corporate governance is to provide strong decision-making processes, which lead to transparency for stakeholders within and outside of the company.
The bad news is that stakeholders love transparency, and without good corporate governance practices, you could be leaving important things on the table. Think transparency-focused potential investors and customers. Think better financing conditions.
The good news is that there is no one-size-fits-all solution which requires you to adopt policies and measures that just don’t work for the company. This means that your approach can be tailored to your needs and to your reality.
Our Top 5 Tips:
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- Start with a precedent for the documents listed below; precedents are readily available and are often a really good place to start – they will serve as a road map and give you an idea of what to include;
- Draft charters for the board of directors and any board committees which clearly define the roles and responsibilities of the board and each committee;
- Draft terms of reference for the chair of your board and for your CEO; this is essentially a job description for each of these positions;
- Draft an ethics policy; this serves as a code of conduct for employees, officers and directors in conducting the affairs of the company;
- Regularly review the charters, terms of reference and ethics policy; it may sound obvious, but don’t start with a “Cadillac version” of any of these documents, which may include roles, responsibilities, descriptions and practices that just don’t work for your company – gradually build up to this version by regularly reviewing, amending and adding to the documents;
We can help you draft some or all of the following:
- charters for the board of directors and any board committees which clearly define the role of the board and each committee, if any.
- terms of reference for the chair of your board.
- terms of reference for your CEO.
- an ethics policy.
To get started, please contact darlene@interalia-law.com.