This report provides an overview of the challenges associated with corporate governance of company groups. Country-specific chapters look at Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru.

This publication provides an overview of the duties and responsibilities of boards in company groups across 45 jurisdictions. The introduction outlines the global landscape of company groups, their economic role and the principal challenges they present with respect to corporate governance polices.

This report provides an overview of frameworks and experience in Latin America and internationally in dealing with the challenges associated with corporate governance of company groups. It describes their economic rationale, benefits and relevance in Latin America, and how they are defined, overseen and regulated. It also delves into some of the risks and more specific challenges involved in ensuring protection of minority shareholder rights and managing or minimising conflicts of interest within groups. It notes the rising importance of Latin American-based multinational company groups. Finally, it reviews existing international and regional guidance on corporate governance of company groups before assessing the more specific policy options and challenges in the region, and describing the conclusions reached by the Latin American Corporate Governance Roundtable and Task Force on Company Groups based on this report's findings. Country-specific chapters provide more specific descriptions of the frameworks in place for corporate governance of company groups in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru

Grounded in institutional theories, this volume offers a framework for understanding the evolution of corporate governance in the six leading Latin American countries, namely Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru. Applying inductive qualitative methods, it postulates the notion of governing as a dynamic, emergent and contextual process and traces its evolution and adaption to the different configurations of institutional logics in each country and the region as a whole over several decades. Adopting corporate governance scandals as the lens through which to observe institutional change in each country, this book reveals the sources of societal transformations, identifying key lessons as well as meaningful setbacks along the way. This edited collection helps appreciate the role and interactions of corporate elites, stakeholders and watchdogs, including the visible hands of government and multinational corporations, presenting comparisons across the countries, the region and the broader evolution of governing practices around the globe. The result is a book combining scholarly rigor and practical relevance, looking to serve as an emerging markets benchmark guide for practitioners, researchers and thinktanks alike.

This report provides an overview of frameworks and experience in Latin America and internationally in dealing with the challenges associated with corporate governance of company groups. It describes their economic rationale, benefits and relevance in Latin America, and how they are defined, overseen and regulated. It also delves into some of the risks and more specific challenges involved in ensuring protection of minority shareholder rights and managing or minimising conflicts of interest within groups. It notes the rising importance of Latin American-based multinational company groups. Finally, it reviews existing international and regional guidance on corporate governance of company groups before assessing the more specific policy options and challenges in the region, and describing the conclusions reached by the Latin American Corporate Governance Roundtable and Task Force on Company Groups based on this report's findings. Country-specific chapters provide more specific descriptions of the frameworks in place for corporate governance of company groups in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru.

After a period of relatively robust growth that has allowed tens of millions of poorer households to join the global middle class, growth in Latin America has slowed recently, partly as a result of external factors.

Chile has a large but relatively illiquid stock market. Global factors such as global risk appetite and monetary policy in advanced economies are key cyclical determinants of liquidity in Chilean equities. Evidence from a cross-section of emerging markets suggests strong protection of minority shareholders can help improve stock market liquitidity. Currently, illiquid in Chilean may have to pay 31⁄2 percent more as cost of equity. Corporate governance should be improved, namely through the adoption of a stewardship code.

This report assesses Peru's integrity system at both the central and subnational levels of government. It provides a set of recommendations to strengthen and consolidate this system, instil a culture of integrity, and ensure accountability through control and enforcement.

The contributors to Corporate Citizen explore the legal frameworks and standards of conduct for multinational corporations. In a globalized world governed by domestic and international law, these corporations can be everywhere and nowhere at once, reaping financial benefits and enjoying the protections of investor-state arbitration but rarely being held accountable for the economic, environmental, and human rights harms they may have caused. Given the far-reaching power and success of the transnational corporation, and the many legal tools allowing these companies to avoid liability, how can governments protect their citizens? Broad-ranging in perspective, colourful and thought-provoking, the chapters in Corporate Citizen make the case that because the success of corporate global citizenship risks undermining national and international democratic governance, the multinational corporation must be more closely scrutinized and controlled – in the service of humanity and the protection of the natural environment.

Corporate governance deals with the ways in which the rights of outside suppliers of equity finance to corporations are protected and receive a fair return. Good practices reduce the risk of expropriation of outsiders by insiders and thus the cost of capital for issuers. Capaul and Fremond review the experience of the preparation of 15 corporate governance country assessments across five continents. The assessments have been prepared under the umbrella of the joint World Bank/IMF initiative of the "Reports on the Observance of Standards and Codes" (ROSCs). The assessments focus on the rights of shareholders, the equitable treatment of shareholders, the role of stakeholders, disclosure and transparency, and the duties of the board of listed companies, and use the OECD Principles of Corporate Governance as benchmark. The authors give an overview of the actual and potential contribution of the assessments to policy dialogue, diagnostic and strategic work, lending and nonlending operations, and technical assistance and capacity, and presents the unfinished agenda. This paper-a product of the Corporate Governance Unit, Private Sector Advisory Services Department-is part of a larger effort in the department to disseminate lessons learned in the assessment of the compliance of countries to global standards. The authors may be contacted at ofremond@worldbank.org or mcapaul@worldbank.org.