June 1, 2002	Saturday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 19,1423

PARIS, May 31: The role of good corporate governance in attracting investment to Asia is to be the subject of the Fourth Asian Roundtable on Corporate Governance to be held in Mumbai on June 10-12.

The announcement of the event was made in Paris by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which is one of the roundtable’s sponsors, along with the Asia Development Bank and the World Bank in partnership with the government of Japan and the Global Corporate Governance Forum.

Participating in the event will be politicians, investors, corporate executives, policy makers and representatives of the civil society from across the Asia-Pacific region.

Not only will they be discussing the subject of corporate governance, the meeting will also focus on “Shareholder rights and the equitable treatment of shareholders,” another major issue of the day in the Asian corporate sector.

Opening speakers will include Chairman and Chief Mentor of Infosys, N.R. Narayana Murthy; OECD Deputy Secretary-General Seiichi Kondo; World Bank’s Director for Private Sector Advisory Services Michael Klein; and Myoung-Ho Shin, Vice-President of the Asian Development Bank.

India’s Union Minister for Law, Justice and Company Affairs, Arun Jaitley, and its Union Minister for Divestment and Department for Development of North Eastern Region, Arun Shourie, will give keynote addresses. Some other Indian participants are Vinod Dhall, Secretary, Department of Company Affairs, G.N. Bajpai, Chairman Securities Exchange Board of India, Deepak Parekh, Chairman HDFC, K.V. Kamath, Managing Director and CEO, ICICI Bank and Omkar Goswami, Chief Economist at the Confederation of Indian Industry.

The meeting will be co-hosted by the Confederation of Indian Industry, the Indian Ministry of Law, Justice and Company Affairs and the Securities Exchange Board of India.

Corporate governance concerns ways in which modern corporations are directed and controlled. Corporate governance practices can vary between companies and countries. For globally mobile investors, the quality of corporate governance has become an increasingly important factor when choosing among different investment opportunities.