Natco, Thejo bag corp governance award

Mumbai: 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.

Accepting the award as Winner, Rajeev Nannapaneni, vice-chairman and chief executive (CEO) of Natco Pharma says, "Most investors look at quarterly performance. That pressure leads to decision making to please the gallery or force companies to make mistakes. That is what causes the mismatch. You cannot build business overnight it takes a long time. Therefore, it is important to change the quarter-on-quarter (QoQ) narrative".

Dr Satyanarayana Chava, Founder and CEO, Laurus Labs also expressed same sentiments. He says, "There is a dichotomy - investor wants quick returns. Management has to keep long-term interest intact. To align these things is a challenge and has to be balanced. Companies taking care of stakeholders with good corporate governance practices will be rewarded over long term."

According to Prof VA George, executive chairman of Thejo Engineering, pillars are governance and values on which we build transparency, honesty, and concern for society. "I thank my parents for instilling the values in me. I thank knowledgeable investors and two founders and other stakeholders," he says.

Explaining the selection process, Debashis Basu, founder-trustee of Moneylife Foundation and editor of Moneylife said, "The nominations went through a rigorous qualitative and quantitative analysis by Gautam Bafna and his team at Wisdom Torch Consulting Solutions. They created the framework and evaluation template to judge these 35 companies under 11 major heads. The information collated by Wisdom Torch on each.

The jury comprising R Balakrishnan (with vast experience in research, rating, investment, and fund management), Prof JP Singh (retired professor of IIM Ahmedabad), myself, and with our deputy editor Yogesh Sapkale as Member-Secretary, held two rounds of detailed deliberations to create a first shortlist of 11 from 35, Basu said.

Analysts at Moneylife then did another round of search on

Watchoutinvestors.com for any regulatory action the jury may have missed. JN Gupta, MD of Stakeholder Empowerment Services allowed access to their website for details on some of the companies that are tracked by the proxy advisory firm. This, Basu said, helped the jury arrive at the final shortlist of five nominees, who all meet very exacting standards of governance.

TS Krishnamurthy, trustee of Moneylife Foundation presided over the Award function. In his address, the former chief election commissioner says, "The Indian stock market has dramatically transformed over the last two years since the Covid lockdown. Investors are looking for companies with a good track record and good corporate governance practices. This independent corporate governance award that is judged primarily based on objective criteria very timely and we hope that this award will become a benchmark over the years."

The Award function was attended by several prominent personalities from all fields and included several investors, analysts, fund managers and researchers from across the country.