Hong Kong has in recent years made great strides in strengthening corporate governance. This includes the stock exchange's Code of Corporate Governance for listed companies, launched in 2004, and recent efforts to rewrite the city's Companies Ordinance, due to be introduced into the Legislative Council before the end of the year.
However, there is still much that needs to be done to improve standards, said April Chan, president of the Corporate Secretaries International Association. The association was launched in March as the first global organisation to represent the corporate secretarial profession and has more than 70,000 members.
Chan, who serves as company secretary for local power company CLP, said that while Hong Kong required companies listed on the stock exchange to disclose the remuneration of their individual board members by name, there was no such requirement for senior managers. Instead, the stock exchange only recommends that companies disclose the remuneration of senior managers on an individual and named basis as a best practice.
'Senior management's remuneration should be on an individual and named basis,' she said.
'Being a senior manager is no different from being a director of a company in that they are paid with what is in essence shareholders' money, and therefore shareholders should have a right to know how much they are being paid.'
Another issue that Hong Kong needs to address if it wants to improve its corporate governance is limiting the number of board directorships that executives are allowed to sit on at any given time.