Mr. Vijit Supinit, SET chairman, who also chairs the Sub-committee on Education and Public Relations for Corporate Governance of Thailand, revealed the names at the conference on “The Corporate Governance Report of Thai Listed Companies 2003” on May 24. This conference was to present the judges’ evaluation of listed companies’ corporate governance, and was a part of the “Baselining Corporate Governance Practices of Thai Listed Companies” project, carried out by the Thailand Institute of Directors Association (Thai IOD), under the support of the SET and the SEC. This seminar is not only to give credit to listed companies who successfully implemented corporate governance practices, but also to provide a database for investors and the general public.
The Top Quartile companies’ 85 firms came from eight different groups, including “Others” -- showing that good governance is widespread across industry sectors, said the chairman. Out of this number, 23 companies were from the Financials group, 13 from Service and 12 from Technology,” he went on.
Thai IOD President Mr. Charnchai charuvastr, said the Thai IOD has been carrying on the evaluation of listed firms’ businesses for three years, based on the criteria developed from those of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the SET. These made Thailand’s evaluations reach international standards and allow the Thai IOD to recognize both strengths and weaknesses of Thai firms.
He went on to add that the recent evaluation used only documents disclosed to the public, in order to more truly reflect the investors’ points of view and help make the project more acceptable to related parties, both in Thailand and in the region. This has also helped ensure the project will further lead to increased corporate governance in Thailand.
The evaluation was to gauge the performance of Thai listed companies’ corporate governance effort. It was also to present an overall assessment to guide firms in formulating their rules, regulations, and reports related to corporate governance, so that companies could recognize their strengths, discover their weaknesses, and develop themselves further.
“This project’s evaluation employs five core criteria, which are: 1) Rights of Shareholders, 2) Equitable Treatment of Shareholders, 3) Role of Stakeholders, 4) Disclosure and Transparency, and 5) Board Responsibilities. The information used to evaluate each firm was from the company’s annual reports, Form 56-1 , agendas of board meetings, its websites, all its information disseminated through the SET and the SEC, and other information disclosed to the public,” said Mr. Charnchai.
The full list of all 85 firms in the “Top Quartile”, by industry, was as follows: Agro & Food: 6; Consumer Products: 4; Financials: 23; Industrials: 6; Property & Construction: 10; Resources: 9, Services: 13; Technology: 12; and Others: 2. (The list of 85 firms can be viewed by clicking here).
