New secretarial standards to boost investor confidence: ICSI

The Institute of Company Secretaries of India (ICSI) today said new secretarial standards will help create "enormous confidence" among capital market investors in the country.
The Companies Act 2013 mandates companies to observe secretarial standards with respect to general and board meetings.
Secretarial standards issued by ICSI, the apex body for company secretaries, would come into effect from July 1 this year and would be applicable to about 8 lakh firms.
"Secretarial standards will create enormous confidence in minds of investors particularly fund managers and overseas investors as these investors are very much concerned about good governance practices and sound procedures," ICSI president Atul H Mehta said.

"Consequently, this will lead to more flow of capital into India, new projects, more modernisations and expansion," he added.
According to Mehta, company secretaries over a period of time have developed themselves as professionals having core competence in compliances and corporate governance.

Company secretaries have been recognised to verify compliances related to various securities market laws, Mehta added.
Talking about secretarial audit, ICSI president said the same "provides comfort to the non-executive/independent directors that appropriate mechanisms and processes are in place to ensure compliance with laws applicable to the company, thus mitigating any risk from a regulatory or governance perspective".

The companies law necessitates every listed firm and public companies with paid capital exceeding Rs 50 crore or turnover exceeding Rs 250 crore to annex with its board's report a secretarial audit report, given by company secretary in practice.