Corporate Governance:

Corporate governance is the set of processes, customs, policies, laws, and institutions affecting the way a corporation (or company) is directed, administered or controlled. Corporate governance also includes the relationships among the many stakeholders involved and the goals for which the corporation is governed. The principal stakeholders are the shareholders/members, management, and the board of directors. Other stakeholders include labor (employees), customers, creditors (e.g., banks, bond holders), suppliers, regulators, and the community at large

Corporate governance is a multi-faceted subject. An important theme of corporate governance is to ensure the accountability of certain individuals in an organization through mechanisms that try to reduce or eliminate the principal-agent problem. A related but separate thread of discussion focuses on the impact of a corporate governance system in economic efficiency, with a strong emphasis on shareholders' welfare.

National conference on Corporate Governance:

Loyola Institute of Business Administration (LIBA) is a premiere Jesuit management institute known for its academic excellence and value-based education. LIBA strives for the holistic formation of future leaders with unmatched professional competence and a strong ethical perspective. LIBA, which has been recently ranked 9th among the approximately 1200 B-Schools in the country by India Today and Business Today in B-School rankings, is making a concerted effort to promote business ethics among our fraternity and corporate through its Centre for Business Ethics and Corporate Governance. One of LIBA’s concrete efforts in this direction has been the annual National Conference on Corporate Governance started way back in 2005. It is our endeavour to rise up to the challenge of addressing crucial governance problems faced by the country and business community at large.

LIBA in association with National Foundation of Corporate Governance conducts the conference on Corporate Governance. The third edition of this conference will be conducted in Hotel Green Park on Feb, 20, 2010. Every year we have been fortunate to have the benefit of eminent speakers both from India and abroad -- business leaders, academicians, bureaucrats. Some of the eminent speakers who have shared their views in the past conferences are Mr.N.Vittal (Former Chief Vigilance Commissioner, Government of India), Mr.T.S.Krishnamurthy (Former Chief Election Commissioner), Mr.Gopal Srinivasan (Director-TVS Electronics, Chairman-CII, Tamil Nadu State Council), Mr.CA S.Santhanakrishnan (Chairman of ICAI Committee on Corporate Governance), Mr.Aminur Rahman (Australian Consul General for South India), Mr.K.K.Acharya (Managing Director, CPCL) and others of international repute.

Theme

The theme for this year’s conference is "Corporate Governance-The Way Forward".

Corporate Governance, as an idea and a desideratum, has reached a crossroad. Corporate Governance is no longer a collection of checks and balances meant to satisfy regulatory bodies. Corporate managers, shareholders, customers, creditors and other stakeholders have come to realize that corporate governance is the moral compass that can help the corporate entity to reach its goals. But realization alone may not suffice. Exhaustive deliberations are needed to understand the various issues involved in effective implementation of corporate governance standards. This conference seeks to be a platform where practitioners and students of corporate governance come together to share and imbibe the letter and spirit behind it.

In an aggressively challenging business scenario, competitive advantages are those that companies long to acquire rewards greater than what their competitors obtain in the market place. These are those strengths that give a company an edge over its competitors, are relatively harder to emulate and are more sustainable in the long term. Traditionally factors such as product development, branding and operational efficiency were seen as the sources of competitive advantages. In this conference the participants present their views on how corporate governance can act as the fountainhead of competitive advantage. Is the competitive advantage that corporate governance begets extremely harder for competitors to emulate? Does it take a lot of time to cultivate corporate governance as a competitive advantage? Does the competitive advantage mustered out of corporate governance have a very long lifetime? There are many more questions lingering in the minds of strategists and practitioners of corporate governance. This conference would strive to throw light on how corporate governance can be utilised as an effective strategic weapon.

The present conference is a humble effort in sharing knowledge on different emerging perspectives of corporate governance. Industry captains and opinion leaders come together to present their views on corporate governance at crossroad and chart the path that corporate governance, as an idea and an institution, would trace in the future.