Welcome to the Centre for Corporate Governance

Directors' Alert 2013 ^new

This publication examines top challenges likely to face organizations and their boards of directors in 2013. This publication offers insights from governance specialists from Deloitte member firms around the globe – Asia, the Middle East, Europe, and the Americas; these specialists have applied local and international perspectives on these and other top boardroom priorities within the context of today’s business environment.

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MCA: National Voluntary Guidelines on Social, Economical & Environmental responsibilities of Business

The guidelines are a refinement over the CSR Voluntary Guidelines 2009, released by the MCA in December 2009. This document represents the consolidated perspective of vital stakeholders in India, and accordingly lays down the basic requirements for businesses to function responsibly, thereby ensuring a wholesome and inclusive process of economic growth.

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Aftershock - Adjusting to the new world of Risk Management ^new

This publication captures the findings from a survey of 192 U.S. executives conducted by Deloitte and Forbes Insights in 2012. The survey finds that post the latest global economic crisis, companies are still operating in a volatile, highly changeable risk environment and they are still working hard to make sense of this environment. A stunning 91% plan to reorganize and reprioritize their approaches to risk management in some form in the coming three years.

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Board effectiveness

• Risk Intelligent Strategy: This paper is written for boards of directors and senior executives – the people responsible, in their capacity as strategic leaders, for identifying and responding to the killer risks and game-changing opportunities that face an enterprise. In this paper, we discuss why boards and directors often suffer from an incomplete understanding of strategic risk – and what they can do to avoid being blindsided by the unexpected.
• Risk intelligent governance: A practical guide for boards: This publication advises boards on their risk oversight responsibilities by providing six areas of focus and action-oriented steps, questions for management, and tools that may help the board implement improvements in each area.
• Board Leadership Services: As Indian companies experience a changing regulatory landscape, rapid growth and international expansion, they should look to adopt prudent measures to safeguard shareholder interests. The centre facilitates a range of assessment services to help corporate boards and their sub-committees in gauging their performance and effectiveness.
• Candour in the cockpit – The board, Reinvented: Ineffective boards today represent the biggest risk to their organizations, but those boards that are prepared to change the culture can transform this risk into phenomenal opportunity. The document describes various ways to reinvent the board of directors as a strategic asset for the organization.
• Review of corporate governance practices of Indian corporates: The study report examines the practice of corporate governance in 42 companies across 12 sectors that represent the vital sections of the Indian industry. It also points out concerns about quality of enforcement, companies taking box ticking approach, deviating from the spirit of compliance laws. It also suggests strengthening evaluation processes of the functioning of the board and its subcommittees. Posted with permission from National Foundation for Corporate Governance, copyright 2009
• Risk Intelligent Enterprise: Some business sectors manage industry-specific risks with a high degree of sophistication; others have a less refined approach. But it is a rare company, we contend, that intelligently manages the full spectrum of risk by assessing and addressing risk from all perspectives and quarters. The document provides an insightful definition of Risk Intelligence and discussed key concepts.
• New Indian Manager: The ‘New Indian Manager’ will need to scale up and broaden competencies and skills as the globalization and competitiveness of Indian business continues. The paper discusses six key characteristics of the new Indian manager that will require significant scaling in months and years to come in order to keep pace with the changing business needs.

Self assessment tools

The audit committee has become, in recent years, one of the main pillars of the corporate governance system in public companies. With new responsibilities and increasing complexities, being a member of the audit committee has never been more challenging. To help respond to this, and to facilitate the evaluation process, we have developed tools that provides audit committee members with a comprehensive checklist of what is required of them to establish good corporate governance.

• Audit Committee performance assessment tools: The tool is a checklist for various actions expected of the Audit Committee in respect of its membership, procedures and resources, roles and responsibilities, relationship with the Board. The responses to each of these items has to be supported by comments/ evidence to justify the same.
• Audit Committee effectiveness assessment tools: The tool is designed in the form of a checklist of Audit Committee functions which have to be rated on a graded scale of perceived effectiveness in the areas of risk management, financial reporting and compliance, internal control environment, and corporate governance.

Tax alerts and guides

India Insights is a complimentary audio news series that examines important business issues of the day.  The latest episodes in this series include:

• Direct Tax Code Alert: The Finance Minister has released the Direct Tax Code Bill, 2009 along with a discussion paper on 12 August 2009 inviting the public to share their views and suggestions. This Deloitte alert provides key highlights of the Code as summarised in the discussion paper.
• Indirect Tax Alerts: Deloitte's continuous alerts keep you updated with the latest that's happening in Indirect Taxes.
• International Tax and Business Guides: Deloitte's International Tax and Business Guides help potential investors understand the investment climate, operating conditions, and tax system of most major trading jurisdictions. The Guides are supplemented by the Country Highlights series, which provide a quick overview of the tax landscape of more than 120 jurisdictions.