Corporations and shareholders around the world are concerned about good corporate governance and the types of best practices that support good governance. Each country has its own laws and regulatory practices that ensure the protection of shareholders and stakeholders. The codes can be found in more than 140 countries around the world, and more than 50 of them have been developed with the help of the IFC. Where appropriate, describe the measure taken rather than compliance and explain how that measure achieves the underlying objective of the specific recommendation or the code as a whole, or clarify how it contributes to good corporate governance of the company.
In particular, publicly traded companies should include a corporate governance statement (CG Statement) in their management report. Important research findings on the dissemination of codes relate to the relationship between the development of capital markets and the number of government codes. This flexibility, which became known as a compliance or explanation regime, allowed companies to comply with the requirements of the code in a variety of ways and, if not, explain why they had not applied the particular requirement, the most common approach. Mandatory disclosure on adapting the code recommendation or explaining deviations is required by listing authorities (for example, the IFC provided guidance on general concepts of corporate governance and on the implementation of corporate governance scorecards).
Corporate governance codes can foster private sector commitment to good corporate governance and aspirations towards higher standards. In addition, the government will continue its top-down approach to improving corporate governance of publicly traded companies, emphasizing conflicts in family-controlled entities. The research results show that the level of compliance with the recommendations of the codes has been increasing in Slovenia. Examples include procurement markets in the U.S.
Department of State and the United Kingdom, where external governance in the form of a market for corporate control with the threat of acquisition presents disciplinary mechanisms for managers. In Ghana, the IFC has partnered with colleagues at the World Bank to support the central bank's efforts to create a governance code. More than half of the total code 112 recommendations were identified as those that were met by all the companies analyzed. This is to provide corporate governance recommendations for public limited companies listed on the Ljubljana Stock Exchange.
These results indicate that the Slovenian GC Code introduced at that time many of the best governance practices, at least in public limited companies listed in Slovenia. Other research studies gave only a partial and often static view of the role of government codes in the practice of Slovenian companies. Research studies and analyses not only in Slovenia but also in other settings are mainly concerned with the disclosure of compliance with the recommendation of the codes.
