Australia: corporate governance reporting under the second edition of the ASX's Principles and Recommendations

The Australian Securities Exchange has published the results of its first review of corporate governance reporting under the second edition of its Corporate Governance Principles and Recommendations for listed entities with a 31 December 2008 balance sheet date. The second edition applies to listed company's first financial year beginning on or after 1 January 2008. 

The ASX's review considered the annual reports of 168 entities (9% of the total number of listed entities). Key findings included the following:

The review of corporate governance reporting of the annual reports of entities having a 31 December 2008 financial year end demonstrates that compliance with the ASX Listing Rules and the Revised Recommendations is at a relatively high level. 

74% of entities reviewed were identified as having reported specifically against the Revised Recommendations. In addition, approximately 14% of entities were identified as being substantially in compliance with the Revised Recommendations and the Listing Rules but did not specifically make reference to the Revised Recommendations. The remaining 12% of entities reviewed were also found to be substantially in compliance with the Listing Rules but reported specifically against the 2003 Recommendations.

On a subjective assessment of corporate governance reporting for each of the 168 entities reviewed, 50 or 29% were described as 'very good', 76 or 45% were described as 'good', 34 or 20% were described as 'satisfactory' and 8 or 5% of entities were described as 'poor' ".