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World Federation of Exchanges (WFE) announced that the recipient of the WFE Award for Excellence this year will be Professor Mervyn King, the incoming Chairman of the International Integrated Reporting Committee (IIRC). South Africa native Professor King is designated for this Award in recognition of his work in leading national commissions on corporate governance reform, and for driving forward a financial reporting framework that is better able to accommodate the complexity and need for transparency in this period of financial and economic turmoil - an Integrated Report.
The WFE Award for Excellence is presented annually in recognition of an outstanding contribution to the advancement of regulated exchange markets. The Award salutes innovation and improvement in the exchange industry's operations, which leads to greater understanding and better usage of the world's capital markets.
The WFE Award of Excellence will be presented to Professor King on October 13, 2011, during a ceremony at the WFE Annual Meeting, hosted by the Johannesburg Stock Exchange.
The Integrated Reporting approach to corporate reporting advocated by Professor King and supported by WFE and exchanges was brought together by world leaders from the corporate, investment, accounting, securities, regulatory, academic, civil society and standard setting sectors. The idea is to develop a new approach to reporting to meet the needs of the 21st century. Professor King's chairmanship role at the IIRC was determined in large part for his work in corporate governance for his native country, "To make our economy sustainable we have to relearn everything we have learnt from the past. That means making more from less and ensuring that governance, strategy and sustainability are inseparable," said Professor King.
"South Africa continues to rank high in the World Economic Forum's annual Global Competitiveness Report and in September 2011 was named the country with the best capital markets regulation. These international distinctions were based in a large part on the value of the governance and accounting reforms put into place by Professor King", said Thomas Krantz, Secretary General of the WFE.
Professor King is a Senior Counsel and former Judge of the Supreme Court of South Africa, as well as Professor Extraordinaire at the University of South Africa on Corporate Citizenship. He is Chairman of the Global Reporting Initiative in Amsterdam, and a member of the Private Sector Advisory Group to the World Bank on Corporate Governance. He is the Chairman of the Asian Centre of Corporate Governance, and Chairman of the United Nations Committee on Governance and Oversight.
He is presently the Chairman of Strate, the settlement arm of trades in equities, money market instruments and bonds in South Africa. He has chaired and been a director of companies listed on the London, Luxembourg and Johannesburg Stock Exchanges. He has consulted, advised and spoken on legal, business, advertising, sustainability and corporate governance issues in 43 countries and has received many awards. He is the author of "Transient Caretakers" and "The Corporate Citizen".
