It's back to school for corporate captains

It's back to school for the captains of corporate India with KPMG having today launched its Audit Committee Institute (ACI).

Ratan Tata, J J Irani, K V Kamath, Lalita Gupte, Deepak Satwalekar, Amal Ganguli, Jerry Rao, Tejendra Khanna and Jagdish Capoor are few of the select members, who would be going back to the classroom as ACI will conduct roundtables and workshops to push the case for effective audit committee processes and practices. Mind you, membership is by invitation only.

"This is a subtle way (through the roundtable and workshops) to get directors to perform better, without telling them they are under training," said J J Irani, chairman of the Irani committee report and director of various Tata group companies.

Identifying the function of an audit committee being the "heart of corporate goverance", Irani cited the example of Enron in which statutory auditors allegedly were hand-in-glove with the management, and together pulled the wool over the eyes of the investing public.

There is increasing demand on the role directors and audit committees with increasing corporate governance, said Ian Gomes, country managing director, KPMG India.

"With increasing penetration of households into the capital market today, there are far reaching impact," he added.

Corporate governance has become very important in light of the Enron scandal of 2001 and succession of financial misreporting, not to mention the September 11 terrorist attack, which brought to light the need for risk management and proper controls in the event of loss of data and employees.

The global decline in the world economy especially at a time when India is trying to integrate itself itself with the rest of the world markets, has also an impact on corporate governance.

"Access to global markets will depend upon corporate governance norms, and the capital market watch-dog, Sebi is taking the right steps to push corporate governance," said Sammy Medora, executive director, KPMG.

He will chair ACI and lead the institute in implementing the national programme.