Assignment on: “Tazreen Fashion and Rana Plaza Tragedy: Failure of Corporate Governance”

Supervised By:
Dr. Chowdhury Saima Ferdous
Associate Professor, Department of International Business
University Of Dhaka
Course no: IB-409 (Corporate Governance)

Prepared By:
D.M. Saddam Hossan
Roll no: 93 (5th Batch)
Department of International Business
University of Dhaka

Date of Submission: October 4, 2015.
A case for Rana Plaza & Tazreen Fashions Ltd.

Bangladesh’s ready-made garments sector accounts for 80% of the country’s exports and employs over 4 million people, nearly three-quarters of who are women. It is estimated that the garment industry supports a further 25 million people and has played a pivotal role in the country’s development. On 24 April 2013, an eight-story commercial building, Rana Plaza, collapsed just outside Dhaka. The building contained five clothing factories: most of the people in the building at the time were garment workers. Over 17 days of search and rescue, 2,438 people were evacuated, more than 1,100 people died, and many more were left with life-long debilitating injuries. The land underneath the Rana Plaza was unsuitable for construction. The Plaza was originally designed as a four-story building primarily for retail store use, but was instead occupied by garment factories. The Plaza was owned by Sohel Rana, who used his aggressive tenacity and political connections to acquire illegal permits and bribe government officials to approve construction. On the day prior to the collapse, warning signs of numerous cracks throughout structure and caution expressed by local engineers were ignored by the garment factory owner and managers, leading to unsafe occupation of the building and the tragic deaths of over a thousand workers. Rana Plaza was not the first tragedy to occur in Bangladesh's garment industry. On November 24,