Corporate Governance – portrayed in the individual cultural and legal framework, from the standpoint of equity capital.

VIPsight is a dynamic photo archive, sorted by nations and dates, by and for those interested in CG from all over the world.

VIPsight offers, every month:
transparent and independent current information / comments / facts and figures on corporate governance locally and internationally,

• written by local CG experts,
• selected and structured by the Club of Florence,
• financed by its initiator VIP and other sponsors with a background of “Equity and Advisory” interests.

COMPANIES

Companies dispense with ratings

When issuing loans companies are increasingly doing without ratings from the big agencies. In Germany SAP, adidas, Otto, Solarworld, Sixt, Evonik, Celesio and Stada, and most recently also Dürr, are the leaders. Internationally, Christian Dior, Air France, Emirates and Heineken join this list. Doing without a rating saves the groups money and at the same time increasingly takes the ground from under the feet of Standard & Poor’s, Moody’s and Fitch. The DZ Bank estimated the market for ratings-free loans in the first half of this year at already some 10% of all bond issues, with a rising tendency.

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Politics

More debts because of new accounting rules

According to the draft new joint accounting standards published in mid-August by the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) and its US counterpart Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB), companies are to disclose their leasing and rental contracts in full on their balance sheets as from 2013. In future the beneficial interest and corresponding commitments for utilization of the leasing object will be on the balance sheet, always and independently of the old rules. This means that the commitments to be disclosed by many companies, especially airlines, logistics firms and retail traders, will in future be considerably higher. more

People

Andreas von Zitzewitz, appointed deputy CEO in July 2009 as successor to Dieter Ammer, left Conergy on 19 August with immediate effect, following a supervisory board meeting. He was to replace the former Tchibo manager as designated successor at the end of October. The 50-year-old will receive payment on his current contract, due to expire at the end of 2011.

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CAMPUS

Banks’ poor image

The financial-market crisis has severely damaged the image of banks. According to a representative survey commissioned in April by the Bund deutscher Banken (BdB), four of ten respondents stated that their trust in banks had suffered strongly from the crisis. In March 2009 the figure was a full 54%. While there has been considerable progress with efforts to regain the trust of bank customers, the credit institutions still need some time to rehabilitate themselves completely, says the BdB. However, eight out of ten bank customers stated they were satisfied on the whole with the investment advice from their own bank.

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