Convergence in corporate governance: Impact of regulation and market enforcement

Corporate governance gained accelerating importance in the aftermath of corporate scandals in the years 2000. Many countries issued their own codes after OECD Corporate Governance principles were issued in 1999 and revised in 2004. Corporate governance protects the rights of minority shareholders, together with the stakeholders including the employees, and ensures check and balances between the company and all these parties. Fundamental principles of good corporate governance are fairness, responsibility, accountability and transparency. The linchpin of good governance is the board. The way the board is composed, qualifications of the board members and efficient board practices ensure the globally accepted principles of good governance. In our thesis, we examined the Corporate Governance Codes of UK, Germany, France and Turkey together with the relevant EU directives and recommendations. We made comparative analysis of these codes and the relevant EU recommendations with the Corporate Governance Standards of New York Stock Exchange to see if there is any convergence from the legal perspective. We then studied the corporate governance practices of the ADR companies of these countries to observe the market enforcement. We found out that although the legal origins of UK and France are different, there is not only convergence in the codes, but also in the corporate governance practices of the company?s. However, such full scale converge cannot be observed in the German and Turkish Codes, or the company practices The legal infrastructure, and the ownership structure of the companies in these countries create obstacles on the way to convergence.