Posted inRegulation

Mobius corporate governance globally is terrible

Franklin Templeton’s emerging markets guru Mark Mobius claims corporate governance standards could be improved upon across the globe, signalling he did not mean to single out Russia at a recent conference hosted by Sberbank in Moscow.

At the forum in April attended by high-profile former statesmen such as Tony Blair and Colin Powell, as well as the good and great of Russian society Mobius admitted he had said the country “needed to have a rule of law, transparency and governance”.

“The question is how they can work that out, they know what they need to do,” he added.

The market is probably the cheapest market in the world, he said today, but its big issue remains poor corporate governance.

When pushed further, however, Mobius said corporate governance could be bad in London, the US, emerging markets and frontier markets.

Of the regions he invests in, he said Eastern Europe had the benefit of a trickle down of the rule of law from Brussels.

Either as members or aspiring members of the European Union the region is moving towards the rule of law and this engenders better corporate governance.

“A lot of these countries do not like it and complain about it but at the end of the day they will comply. Brussels sets standards and tries to get people to adhere to them, it sets a benchmark.”

Part of the Mark Allen Group.