Governance and Risk Book

An analytical handbook for investors, managers, directors and stakeholders

Effective corporate governance has long been viewed as essential for healthy capital markets. Careless and inefficient governance practices, however, have thrust the governance debate from the shadows to the forefront, and corporate governance can now be recognized as a stand-alone risk factor.

Many market participants now question whether true self-governance is possible or even realistic in today's era of razor-thin profit margins and bloated executive paychecks.

This all-encompassing book compiled and edited by George Dallas, managing director and global practice leader of Standard & Poor's Governance Services unit. It includes contributions by senior members of Standard & Poor's Governance Services group, as well as from other experts in the area of corporate governance. The book offers the following benefits:

• Provides a wide-ranging discussion of methodologies and criteria relating to corporate governance analysis;
• Brings together diverse country environments in a common analytical framework;
• Seamlessly links up-to-date conceptual and theoretical thinking about governance to practical performance issues;
• Explores broader themes of governance-sustainable development, directors and officers insurance, behavioral aspects, and approaches to governance in managed funds and governments.

Highly publicized collapses in governance have replaced calm and complacency with vigilance and even stridence, often obscuring valuable and necessary aspects of governance that are long-overdue for discussion and review.

Governance and Risk presents a balanced and rational approach to one of today's most emotional topics. It also outlines an analytical model for both evaluating the governance practices of individual corporations and protecting yourself or your organization from the effects of incomplete, inaccurate, and potentially misguided practices.