Finance

Finance

Baku hosts a seminar â€œCorporate Governance in Banks: Azerbaijan and International Practice

12 March 2009 14:56 (UTC +04:00)

Baku. Nijat Mustafayev - APA-Economics. IFC, a member of the World Bank Group, and Azerbaijan Microfinance Association has held a seminar entitled â€œCorporate Governance in Banks: Azerbaijan and International Practiceâ€ as part of the proposed Azerbaijan Corporate Governance Project.
Caroline Bright, Azerbaijan Corporate Governance Project Manager, underlined the importance of the knowledge of corporate governance for all financial institutions, adding that good corporate governance provides for the efficiency, risk management and correct strategy.
According to her, investors above all pay attention to good governance in a company especially amid the global financial crisis.
In 2005, IFC launched the Corporate Governance Project to improve practices at Azerbaijani joint-stock companies and banks, helping them enhance operations and increase their ability to attract financing and investment. To date, the project has trained 360 joint-stock companies and banks and enabled clients to attract about $18 million in investments due to improved practices. It also helped the government develop four pieces of legislation, which have been adopted, and developed a model course that was adopted by five local universities. The project is supported with funds from the government of Switzerlandâ€™s State Secretariat for Economic Affairs.