THE 2019 Asean Corporate Governance Scorecard (ACGS) Awards have acknowledged 37 Malaysian public-listed companies (PLCs) for their outstanding and exemplary corporate governance practices.
The ACGS assessment is a collective effort of the Asean Capital Markets Forum (ACMF) and the Asian Development Bank (ADB), as part of the Asean Corporate Governance (CG) initiative introduced in 2011.
The assessment is participated by six Asean countries namely, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam.
ACGS aims to raise the CG standards and practices among Asean PLCs, as well as to acknowledge the well-governed ASEAN companies in those countries.
The ACGS assessment was developed based on international benchmarks –Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Principles of Corporate Governance (2004), International Corporate Governance Network (ICGN) Corporate Governance Principles, as well as other international best practices –is currently done on an alternate year basis.
Domestic Ranking Body (DRB) for the respective countries will undertake the preliminary assessment of their respective top 100 market capitalisation PLCs.
The top 35 PLCs ranked according to their scores in the preliminary assessment were then subjected to peer review by another DRB.
Then, DRBs and peer reviewers carried out engagements and discussion to reconcile any differences in the scores and to agree on the final score for each PLC.
Minority Shareholders Watch Group (MSWG) is the DRB for Malaysia in the ACGS assessment.
Meanwhile, the 2019 ACGS Awards have recognised Asean PLCs based on three award categories: Top 20 Asean Publicly Listed Companies, Asean Asset Class Award and Top 3 PLCs per country.
As for Asean Asset Class Award, Asean PLCs which obtained a score of 97.5 points (or at least 75% of the maximum attainable score of 130) in the assessment will be recognised.
And, the top three PLCs which garnered the highest scores per participating Asean member country will be recognized as the Top 3 PLCs for the country.
For Malaysia, the biggest winners among Malaysian PLCs are – AMMB Holdings Bhd, Bursa Malaysia Bhd and Malayan Banking Bhd – with recognition received in all the three categories. – Dec 10, 2020
