The increasing number of financial and accounting frauds and corporate governance failures in the US is stepping up the re-examination of corporate governance practices and calls for reform worldwide. It is also leading many to question whether the US system deserves its status as a leading governance model. Indeed, some proposals for reforms of the US system would implement disclosure requirements similar to those that have been in place in the UK for a decade and have gained ground throughout Europe, Asia and Latin America. Such disclosure requirements focus on whether a company has implemented elements set forth in an otherwise voluntary corporate governance code of best practice.
As a broad generalisation, interest in and development of voluntary corporate governance codes of best practice has largely been in response to corporate governance crisis of various sorts. In the US, interest in codes of best practice can be linked to the corporate bribery scandals of the 1970s and corporate performance failures of the 1980s. European interest in codes of best practice dates to the early 1990s and, in particular, a series of financial scandals and related failures of listed companies in the UK.
