Better corporate governance is crucial to regional growth

John Martin St Valery is a partner at NxD-global Over the last 10 years, corporate governance in the MiddleEast has progressed from being a relatively non-existent business practice tobecoming widely accepted as fundamental for attracting foreign investmentinflows and deepening the region’s financial markets.  It was onlyafter the global financial crisis that Gulf Cooperation Council governmentsstarted to take corporate governance more seriously. We saw new regulations andcodes come into effect, each outlining principles that would bring domestic corporategovernance practices in line with international standards. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and DevelopmentJournal reports that today only three countries out of 17 surveyed in theMiddle East and North Africa region do not have any corporate governance codesin place. While this is certainly a step in the right direction, theimplementation and enforcement of the codes remain questionable. The Gulf financial markets now have similar standards forcorporate governance throughout, but the extent to which they