New Zealand Principles of Corporate Governance and Responsibility. A Global Perspective.

Prepared by: Mark Gray

Large businesses around the world are controlled in a variegated fashion. Whilst the Anglo American system of corporate control is heavily based on a strict structure of a Board of Directors, in itself controlled by a chairman and constituting a various number of executive and non-executive directors. Whilst the primary function of the Board has fundamentally been seen as one of accountability, monitoring and goal setting, there is large chasm of difference in Board performance, and this highlighted graphically by the numerous large scale Corporate collapses in the United States.
Indeed the U.S economy has been severely affected by ‘avoidable’ corporate bankruptcies.
As the United States comprises a large proportion of the largest corporations in the world, it is not surprising that it has suffered a large number of corporate failures of corporate governance (Blackmore, 2006). The speedy corporate meltdown of very large U.S corporations, the like of Lehman Brothers and Enron threw the entire U.S business community into turmoil, prompting the U.S and other governments to speedily regulate as a deterrent to all business owners. This approach is ‘rules based’ and relies heavily on legislation for business compliance and good corporate governance.

Although there have been corporate failures in New Zealand, most recently these have generally been finance companies. The downside of these failures has seen large personal and institutional investments lost through poor management and sometimes through alleged fraudulent activity.
Unlike the U.S, New Zealand’s corporate governance regime is predominantly ‘principle based’, although the first tier of company compliance for regulators is the Companies Act