Corporate Governance in Major Economies of the Americas

Corporate governance involves the relationships among a company’s management, its board of directors and its shareholders. It concerns the means by which a corporation assures investors that it has well-performing management in place, and that capital investments made by shareholders are being put to appropriate and profitable use. Recent allegations of accounting improprieties at companies that were seemingly under-scrutinized by corporate governance mechanisms have caused significant turmoil in global capital markets.

Corporate governance has increasingly been the subject of considerable attention among corporate executives, institutional investors and market regulators worldwide. In the United States, Congress passed the Sarbanes-Oxley Act to enhance corporate disclosure, transparency and responsibility for financial statements, and the United States Securities and Exchange Commission has implemented significant portions of that legislation.

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