What is good and what is bad, or how the awards reached their winners

On December 19, 2001 the "Corporate Governance in Russia – 2001" Award Ceremony was held to acknowledge the program winners. The program was implemented by the Investor Protection Association (IPA) – a leading Russian professional organization, uniting largest domestic and international investors with the total amount of investments into the Russian real sector over 10 bln dollars.

For the second year in a raw IPA members give their own judgement about the corporate governance quality of largest Russian enterprises, evaluating various corporate governance aspects such as investor relations, dividend policy, strategic management, protection of minority shareholders' rights, corporate transparency. The list of nominations was expanded significantly compared to last year, now featuring 7 categories, where investors selected the winners.

Many quests of the Ceremony were late to come, some event did not make it there. The problem was the weather - a strong snow storm caused traffic jams all over Moscow, and made both organizers and participants fluster, forcing them to employ maximum savvy during the ceremony.

The Ceremony was opened by the Deputy Minister of Economic Development and Trade A. Sharonov, who addressed welcoming remarks to the invitees. He noted that many Russian companies currently work hard to improve their corporate governance quality, since it has a direct impact on their market value.

Although "Vympelcom" was named the company with best corporate governance, the absolute leader of the program was YUKOS, which won four nominations out of seven (including the "Best manager of the year" going to YUKOS head M. Khodorkovsky). Besides traditional "tablets of honor" the winners were also given incentive prizes – baskets full of fresh strawberries, which certainly added to their excitements and evoked a vivid reaction of the audience.

The last but not the least was the nomination, where investors named the company, in which they wanted to see most corporate governance improvements in the future. This year Sberbank was called the company with worst corporate governance. The most recent scandal around Sberbank was in May-June 2001. Minority shareholders actively protested against the additional share issues, fearing dilution of their.

We remind you, that YUKOS, which collected a pile of prizes this time, was a real bugaboo for investors just a few years ago. "I hope that Sberbank will be able to make a similar breakthrough," – said IPA Deputy Director Oleg Fedorov.