Enhancing corporate governance for banking organisations

Note: This consultative document has been superseded by the final version of February 2006.

Introduction

The issue of corporate governance continues to attract considerable national and international attention. The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (the Committee) published guidance in 1999 to assist banking supervisors in promoting the adoption of sound corporate governance practices by banking organisations in their countries. This guidance drew from principles of corporate governance that were published earlier that year by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) with the purpose of assisting governments in their efforts to evaluate and improve their frameworks for corporate governance and to provide guidance for financial market regulators and participants in financial markets.

Since the publication of those documents, issues related to corporate governance have continued to attract considerable national and international attention in light of a number of high-profile breakdowns in corporate governance. In response to requests to assess the OECD principles in view of such developments, the OECD published revised corporate governance principles in 2004. Recognising that revised guidance could also assist banking organisations and their supervisors in the implementation and enforcement of sound corporate governance, and in order to offer practical guidance that is relevant to the unique characteristics facing banking organisations, the Committee is publishing this revision to its 1999 guidance. This paper also presents some considerations for corporate governance related to the activities of banking organisations that are conducted through structures that may lack transparency, or in jurisdictions that pose impediments to information flows...more