11/14/2005

corporate governance without responsibilities

an article by adrian tan on corporate governance in today newspaper questioned the responsibilities of parties involved in doing due diligence on a company before being listed or being bought over. his findings, after interviewing experts in the business, discovered that for the huge sums of money being paid to the managers of public issues or those who arranged the sale of a company, the job done is elementary and without responsibilities. what these people did was to established and confirmed what the company said about it's business model, its management and their qualifications and the assets they have. and they charged quite a handsome fee for doing these. and when the company was eventually found to be misrepresented to the extend of declaring bankruptcy or declaring big losses within a few months after due diligence was done, just too bad. not their problem. if this be the case, then these kinds of work could be done by a lawyer's clerk like doing conveyancing checks and for a small fee. all the regulators needs to do is to haul up the offending company's management and charge them. and this is what they are doing. so why dispense with so much money and time doing due diligence that is just the verification of data and facts but with no responsibilities? is this what corporate governance is all about?

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