Seminar on Best Governance Practices

A seminar was organized on Wednesday by Oman Governance and Sustainability Centre in collaboration with Deloitte  on “Best Practices of Governance” under the auspices of HE Sheikh Abdullah Salim Al Salmi, Executive President of the Capital Market Authority, Chairman of Oman Centre for Governance and sustainability.

EH the Executive President of CMA opened the seminar by stressing the importance understanding the  Code of Corporate Governance and its requirements. He added  implementation of the  Code will be  mandatory  on listed companies and funds next July.

Al Salmi said the Code was amended for better performance of the listed companies and for enhanced, transparent and competitive economy.

Mr. Ahmed Al Qassbi, Principle, Deloitte Oman gave a presentation on the new Code of Corporate Governance highlighting the features of the new code such as evaluation of directors, definition of the independent director, composition of the board and that the directors must undergo orientation  programmee in  30 days after formation of the board to acquire the required skills such as strategic vision and ability to give opinion in matters of concern to the company.

Al Qassabi said directors must have background in accounting and finance as well as knowledge on management trends in the region and globally in addition to ability to deal with  short term and long term crisis.

He tackled the skills and competencies of directors such as integrity, rightness, wisdom and prudence as well as the ability to read and understand financial statements.

He talked about the definition o f independent director as independence allows the director to act objectively which require independence from the management and major shareholders so as no group would have dominance on the company. The code defines the independent director as the one who is financially independent and  who acts objectively.

Sayyid Hamid Sultan Al Busaidy, Executive Director of Oman Governance and Sustainability Centre  presented a paper on the evolution of governance and the services of OCGS to promote and enhance  governance  in the Sultanate and  its activities  to the national economy by working for to transfer the companies to better levels of efficiency and sustainability and for building strong, transparent  and competitive economy. He urged all the companies and organizations regardless of their legal status to join the OCGS to avail its services.

He added that OCGS would contribute in the training programmes and providing consultancy services to the companies and directors.

Then a discussion session started attended by representatives of CMA, MSM, OCGS, public joint stock companies, audit firms and law firms.  They discussed the challenges facing implementation of the code and how to overcome them when mandatory implementation starts in July. They anticipated higher levels of disclosure as every company is required to set its own disclosure policy. Then they tackled the issue of evaluation of directors and how to set specific evaluation policy for each company, composition of committees, separation between the executive management and the board of directors  and the role of the secretary.