Natco Pharma & Thejo bag Moneylife Corp governance award

Mumbai, Jan 07 Hyderabad-based Natco Pharma and Chennai-based Thejo Engineering are the winner and runner-up of Moneylife Foundation's inaugural Corporate Governance Award.In an online function, M Damodaran, former chairman of SEBI announced the winner and runner-up from five shortlisted nominees. Five finalists for this year's award were KPR Mill, Laurus Labs, Natco Pharma, Suven Pharma and Thejo Engineering.

According to the former chief of SEBI, companies stand or falldepending on their boards. "Size is not the real indicator but the kind of people that get into the board. If a promotor has courage to bring into boardroom people who can ask tough questions, no board will extract value from management and vice versa. Peaceful co-existence does not work in board rooms," he added.

Damodaran also expressed anguish over introduction newer regulations for each delinquency by a company. He says, "Before new regulations are introduced, it must be analysed if better enforcement of existing regulations can address the problem. Before you write new regulations, do a cost benefit analysis and regulatory impact assessment. Most importantly all regulations must have a sunset clause, else you cannot take away redundant regulations. It should be done like what Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has been doing. RBI withdrew 104 regulatory instructions and circulars that have become redundant or were duplicated as per the Regulations Review Authority's interim recommendation (RRA). Why this cannot be followed by all other regulators?"

Debashis Basu, founder-trustee of Moneylife Foundation and editor of Moneylife pointed out, "while we are assembled here to give awards for the best and the second-best, let me make one thing absolutely clear.

Each of these business leaders is equally exceptional in what they believe in and how they have lived up to their beliefs. They are all winners in my personal view and I am sure will be winners in the coming years," he says.