BOURSE HONORS 4 LISTED COMPANIES, 2 TRADING PARTICIPANTS

The Philippine Stock Exchange honored four publicly listed companies and two trading participants for excellence in their corporate governance (CG) programs and practices.

At the 2017 PSE Bell Awards for excellence in corporate governance held Thursday night at the Makati Shangri-La Hotel, the stock exchange cited Deutsche Regis as the best trading participant in terms of compliance program while BPI Securities was honored as the best in retail investor program.

The four publicly listed companies honored were Pilipinas Shell, for best in initial public offering program for small investors; First Philippine Holdings, best in sustainability pro- gram; Aboitiz Equity Ventures, best in compliance and ethics program, and SM Prime Holdings, best in investor relations.

“By recognizing excellence in corporate governance, wehope to encourage more listed companies and trading participants to continue to enhance and strengthen their CG standards and practices and to set higher sustainability goals in their operations,” said PSE president and chief executive Ramon S. Monzon.

The PSE changed this year’s Bell Awards format to honor publicly listed companies and trading participants which excelled in specific areas of corporate governance. In previous years, the top five among listed companies and top five among trading participants were picked based on compliance or exceeding compliance with minimum corporate governance manuals.

This year’s panel of judges was chaired by PSE director Edgardo Lacson. The members were Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Teresita Herbosa, Canadian Ambassador John Holmes, University of the Philippines president Danilo Concepcion, Capital Markets Integrity Corp. officer-in-charge Daisy Arce and Governance Commission for GOCCS (government-owned and -controlled corporations) Chair Samuel Dagpin Jr.

Moving forward, the PSE intends to continue giving the Bell Awards every two years instead of every year to give time for listed companies and trading participants to flesh out corporate governance strategies.