Asean report cites 50 listed PH firms

Fifty Philippine publicly listed companies, including the Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE) itself, were included among the top-performing companies in the country for the second straight year based on the Asean Corporate Governance Scorecard (ACGS) country reports and assessments 2013-2014.

Top listed companies from six participating Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) member-countries were evaluated based on international standards of corporate governance, including the five Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) principles of corporate governance.

The ACGS is a joint initiative of the Asean Capital Markets Forum and the Asian Development Bank.

“The PSE continues to strive to adhere to the highest standards of corporate governance as we are cognizant of the benefits of having good governance practices to the investing public and to the country. Being at the forefront of promoting good corporate governance among listed companies, we know that we ourselves have to practice the same tenets that we are espousing and the results of the recent ACGS show that we are in the right direction,” PSE president Hans Sicat said.

Also included in the list of top 50 Philippine listed companies evaluated under the ACGS were Aboitiz Equity Venture, ABS-CBN Corp., Anchor Land Holdings, Ayala Corp., Ayala Land, BDO Unibank, Bloomberry Resorts Corp., Cebu Holdings, Century Properties Group, China Banking Corp., COL Financial Group, D&L Industries, East West Bank, Energy Development Corp., Far Eastern University, First Gen Corp., First Philippine Holdings Corp., Globe Telecom, GMA Network, International Container Terminal Services, JG Summit Holdings, Lepanto Consolidated Mining Corp., Lopez Holdings Corp., Manila Electric Co., Manila Water, Megawide Construction Corp., Metro Pacific Investments Corp., Metrobank, Pepsi-Cola Products Philippines, Petron Corp., Philex Mining, Philex Petroleum Corp., Philippine Bank of Communication, Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co., Philippine Savings Bank, Philweb Corp., RFM Corp., Rizal Commercial Banking Corp., Rockwell Land Corp., San Miguel Corp., San Miguel Pure Foods Co., Security Bank, Semirara Mining, SM Investments, SM Prime Holdings, Starmalls , STI Education Systems Holdings, Union Bank and Vista Land and Lifescapes.

“We know that there is still a lot of work to be done as we aim to increase the overall scores of PLCs in the country. The upcoming Asean integration will highlight even more the importance of improving our corporate governance scores but we are confident that as we increase awareness on corporate governance, we can become competitive against our peers in the region,” Sicat said.

The average CG scores of the top 94 Philippine publicly listed corporations by market capitalization improved to 58 points in 2013 from 48.91 points in the previous year. Across participating Asean countries, the mean score improved by 19 percent to 64.02 points in 2013 from 53.66 in the prior year. Thailand topped the chart with 75.39 points while Singapore posted the biggest improvement (29 percent year-on-year ) in its mean score of 71.68 points. Malaysia scored 71.69, an improvement from the previous year’s 62.29 points. Doris C. Dumlao