Financial Times

Cabraal picked for top World Bank assignment

The Global Corporate Governance Forum of the World Bank has selected Ajith Nivard Cabraal a well-known local professional, as their international expert to provide a step-by-step approach to Corporate Governance Codes of Best Practice, worldwide.

Cabraal is expected to prepare a Toolkit which would provide a taxonomy of existing Codes of Best Practice internationally and to draw on lessons learned so as to provide a systematic approach on developing, implementing and reviewing Corporate Governance Codes of Best Practice in the future, his office said in a statement.

The growing interest of developing countries to craft and adopt Corporate Governance Codes reflects an understanding that good corporate governance is essential to attracting foreign and domestic investment into a country, and also to improve corporate performance. "Well publicized corporate failures, financial scandals and more generally, efforts to advance good corporate governance practices have led a number of countries to develop Corporate Governance Codes of Best Practice.

In some cases these Codes have had a tremendous impact while in other cases they have failed to translate into improved practices at the corporate level," the statement said.

Such Toolkits are expected to provide policy makers, private sector decision makers and/or NGOs with road maps and implementation mechanisms to help structure step-by-step efforts to improve Corporate Governance practice in their respective regimes.

The objective of the Toolkits is to distill international experience and offer mechanisms for adapting such experiences to local circumstances.

Once the Toolkit that Cabraal, a well known Sri Lankan professional, is working on is complete, it is expected to be published as a World Bank Technical Paper.

Inside with PIX