Corporate social responsibility across Middle East and North Africa

This paper attempts to synthesise the reports prepared by various authors, who live and work in their homeland in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), on the notion of “corporate social responsibility” (“CSR”). The reports are prepared as a prologue for a workshop organised by New Jordanian Research Centre (URJC) on strengthening “CSR” in the businesses of the region. The authors come from different backgrounds. They were invited not to engage in an academic exercise but to capture and reflect upon the “realities” of the debate in their countries on the basis of their role as proactive participants. The objective was to detect common elements and patterns in the issues of and approaches to “CSR” in the MENA region. The authors were asked to use a common format for their reports, but left free in their approach

Turkish transperancy and disclosure survey 2008; a year of littel or no progress

Standard & Poor's Governance Services and the Corporate Governance Forum of Turkey (CGFT) at Sabanci University in Istanbul monitored and assessed corporate response to regulation and market circumstances by conducting the survey over four successive years, with the objective of providing a comparative insight into the disclosure practices of Turkish companies. Laws and regulations concerning corporate governance and their enforcement have been drastically improved during these years. The new legal and regulatory framework includes Corporate Governance Guidelines issued in 2003, directives related to audit and accounting standards and practices issued in and after 2003 by the Capital Markets Board of Turkey (CMB), a new Banking Law, and directives issued by the Banking Regulatory and Supervisory Agency. This report summarizes the finding of the fourth survey and provides an insight into the impact of the regulatory changes on disclosure. The data collected are used for further research by CGFT researchers, to analyze the relationship between disclosure and transparency, disclosure and performance, and disclosure and firm characteristics

Turkish transparency and disclosure survey 2007: pace of improvement has slowed

The report summarizes the results of the third phase of public disclosure survey of Turkish companies. The study looks at the disclosure practices of 52 companies which are constituencies of S&P/IFC Global-Turkey and ISE-60, compares it with the previous years' results. The conclusion is that the pace of improvement in the disclosure practices of Turkish companies has slowed down with marginal improvement in the area of financial disclosure and ownership transperancy and moderate improvement in board disclosure

The state of sustainable investments in key emerging markets: synthesis report

The report is intended as a summary and synthesis of country reports on the state of sustainable investing in key emerging markets, namely China, India, Brazil and Turkey. In general, the authors have defined sustainable investments as investments that incorporate environmental (E), social(S) and governance (G) factors into the investment processes. The reports primarily investigate sustainable investments through the supply of financial capital to publicly listed firms in the form of equity investments through the stock markets, using strategies that incorporate environmental, social, and governance (ESG) risks into the investment process, with a long-term perspective. These investments can be purposefully ESG-inclusive and marketed as such (theme-based or labelled), or they can include ESG factors somehow in the processes without explicitly referring to sustainability-related factors. The reports also consider the supply of financial capital in various classes and forms to listed and privately held firms with a consideration of the investment’s impact on economic and social development or on investors’ values

Corporate governance in Turkey: implications for investments and growth

Background Paper for Turkey’s Investment Climate Assessment 200

Sustainable investment in Turkey: issue brief

IFC launched a series of sustainable investment country reports initially covering the largest emerging capital markets attracting global portfolio investors: Brazil, India, and China. Further reports have been added to the series covering Sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and North Africa, and Turkey. This Issue Brief 's the summary version of the report, “Sustainable Investment in Turkey,

Rating based indexing of Istanbul Stock Exchange, lessons from its failure and Novo Mercado's sucess in to advance corporate governance reforms

This paper compares the objectives, processes and outcomes of different approaches adopted by BOVESPA and ISE for differentiating “better governed” firms listed on their respective boards. Novo Mercado of BOVESPA, launched at the end of December 2000, was able to attract over 30 companies within 5 years, whereas ISE CG Index, announced in February 2005, is not yet launched due to lack of interest from the issuers

Gender and climate change disclosure: an interdimensional policy approach

This paper investigates the impact of corporate boards’ gender diversity on voluntary public disclosure of climate change risks in an emerging economy context in which environmental regulations are weak and markets are ineective. The investigation relies on data from the CDP (formerly known as the Carbon Disclosure Project) as a corporate sustainability reporting initiative supported by institutional investors, based on a sample of Turkish firms that were invited to disclose their climate change risks and greenhouse gas emissions over the period of 2010–2019 through the CDP platform. We report that the presence of women on board committees, as a proxy for their active involvement in corporate governance, increases the likelihood of voluntary climate change disclosure. We, on the other hand, found no evidence of a positive impact on climate change reporting with women’s overall representation in boards. These findings lend support to board reforms that aim to increase eective representation of women on boards for the better management of sustainability risks and responsiveness to stakeholder demands in countries where legislators are reluctant to introduce climate change reforms

Sermaye Piyasası Kurulu'nun 'kurumsal yönetim' konulu tebliğleri ile ilgili genel değerlendirme ve yorum

Sermaye Piyasası Kurulu 30 Aralık 2011 ve 11 Şubat 2012 tarihlerinde yayınladığı Seri IV, No: 56 ve 57 sayılı tebliğlerle 2003 yılında ‘uy yada açıkla’ yaklaşımı ile yayınladığı Kurumsal Yönetim İlkeleri’ni yeniledi ve ilkelerin bir kısmını 654 sayılı kanun hükmündeki kararnamenin kendisine verdiği yetkilere dayanarak halka açık şirketler için uyulması zorunlu kurallar haline getirdi. Bu makale, reform niteliğindeki bu değişikliklerin uluslar arası alanda geniş çapta kabul görmüş kuramsal bir çatı ve diğer gelişmekte olan piyasalarda elde edilmiş görgün sonuçlar ışığında değerlendilmesi ve yorumlanması amacıyla yazılmıştır