Working with Government, industry and other
stakeholders
One of the ways in which our commitment to creating a better South African
business environment manifests itself is our contribution to government and
private sector initiatives aimed at improving the local business environment,
which in turn will increase foreign investors’ confi dence in South Africa, impacting
positively on the economy of our country. The following represent some examples
of this:
Our active involvement in Nepad is evident at various levels. One of
the ongoing debates around Nepad
is the role of the private sector
and what its participation should
be. We have risen to the challenge
of engaging with Nepad since its
inception. At the invitation of the South African
Ministry for Trade and Industry,
we presented a paper at the
World Economic Forum gathering
in Durban in 2003. Our Chief
Executive Officer, Colin Beggs, and
our Deputy Chief Executive Officer,
Stanley Subramoney, are also
part of the South African Business
Group working on business’s
interaction with Nepad. We have
also set up a Southern African
team to investigate the business opportunities presented by Nepad.
Using our expertise, various members of our firm were involved
at different levels in assisting with
the development of the South
African Accounting and Auditing
framework, aimed at ensuring
that the high global standards are
adopted locally. This is closely
aligned with our business strategy,
and the benefits are significant,
including investor confidence and
the resultant positive impact on the
economy.
Malcolm Dunn, Head of our Assurance practice served on the
main King Committee responsible
for developing the King Report
on Corporate Governance for
South Africa 2002. We also had
representatives serving on the
following task teams supporting
the King Committee in this respect:
Accounting and Auditing, Risk
Management and Internal Audit
and Integrated Sustainability
Reporting. Our contributions
helped to shape the guiding
principles of corporate governance
in South Africa.
Our involvement in and contribution to the World Summit
on Sustainable Development held in Johannesburg during
2002 showed our commitment
to working together with other
organisations in addressing the
social challenges that South Africa
faces.
Whistle Blowers assists in preventing and detecting white-collar crime. This company
is a joint venture between
PricewaterhouseCoopers and
Enforce Security Group, and
enables clients and stakeholders
to anonymously expose dishonesty
within their organisations.
Through the annual South Africa’s Top Companies Global Awards we
encourage South African companies
to adopt world-class standards
that will enable them to compete
successfully in the global market,
by giving awards and recognition
to companies showing significant
progress in this regard. The Awards chart the progress
of South African companies that
have been steadily improving
their ranking in terms of global
competitiveness. Their performance is reviewed
in terms of three main criteria:
percentage of assets residing
outside South Africa, percentage
of turnover earned outside
South Africa, and percentage of
overall employees that reside on
foreign soil. These criteria ratios
(percentages, not pure rand values)
are used to effectively benchmark
the entrants, regardless of size.
The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 is a wide-ranging and far-ranging legal response by the United States to specific corporate abuses and its broad intent is to deal with the core issues of transparency, integrity and oversight of financial markets. The provisions of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act establish an independent accounting oversight board, require executive certification of financial statements, expand rules covering conflicts of interest, and increase civil and criminal penalties.
In order to assist South African companies that are SEC registered, or local subsidiaries of SEC-registrants, we released a document on Corporate Governance 2002 to assist practitioners with reporting in terms of US legislation.
