Global Governance Issues

Good Governance, if implemented and communicated is an excellent vehicle to enhance the organization or the company's Compliance and Risk management capabilities. This is due to the fact that this year's themes and focus issues are on automation and optimization of processes, record keeping, reporting, and disclosure. The Governance project of the conference will ensure even a diversified organization with 'part-time' Governance Officers can identify the crevices from the Governance gaps.

The conference speakers will furthermore focus on developing solutions utilizing existing in-house expertise with the primary focus to create a holistic vision of how Corporate Governance can support their compliance and risk management requirements without creating additional burdens or bureaucratic processes in the organization.

There are several speeches during the 2 days, that will update you on the Governance, Risk and Compliance Policy Management

• Managing the policies and procedures and processes that govern a corporation's day-to-day operations brings its own set of challenges.
• How to keep these policies current, communicating them to employees, addressing exception requests and violations, and much more.
• Effective policy management brings insights on how they can apply those lessons to your own organization

Another speech is on The Stakeholder and investor's demands on Management, Board of Directors and Committees

• How to develop a program for collecting metrics on your organizations GRC efforts and what to presents to the board.
• What should directors and senior management report and inform, based on their vast array of data and concerns, to what boards of directors truly need to know, understand, and act upon.

Audit Committees now play a rather important role to liaise between the board, management and external and internal auditors.

In these turbulent times post Lehman Brothers collapse, the financial reporting of many larger companies are particularly complex including the impairment test problems (Impairment issues), counter party risks, going concern relationship etc. These problems present complex issues matters that both challenges AC'ere and the need for a challenging dialogue with the external auditors.

CFO's and Auditors feel that there is an urgent need to simplifying Financial, Accounting & GRC reports and disclosures. From the top audit authority in Scandinavia we will go thru:

• Disclosure and reporting demands from regulators, oversight authorities, and other stakeholders are extensive. How can you improve your ability to demonstrate effective compliance—if the processes are properly crafted.
• Reporting and visualization tools can provide you with full visibility into and across GRC operations, including your controls, policies, and attestations your company or your employees make to ethical conduct.

The Bribery Act and The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act are indeed creating quite a misunderstanding and confusion both in the board rooms and in the internal audit departments. In many ways there is the same frustration as when SOX was introduced. The uncertainty creates a bit of disturbance and therefore we have invited 2 experts, one a lawyer from Eversheds and an accountant from PwC to shed light on and:

• Explore all the nuts-and-bolts of the Bribery and the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, and how to put the various permissible Bribery Fraud and Corruption theories to the test. Muster the BA and FCPA concerns as they have developed during the past couple of years.

In order to comply with The Bribery Act and The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, Anti corruption due diligence involving and engaging third parties is fundamental to avoid disasters. Whatever the location or nature of the arrangement, can expose any organisation to the risks in a number of areas including export controls, fraud, money laundering, conflicts of interest and other unethical business practices.

• This can result in reputational if not financial damage to your organisation, if not well managed.
• There are a number of well publicised cases of organisations being brought into disrepute by associations with third parties whose ethical practices are not aligned. There is now an expectation from certain prosecutors, that organisations proactively manage these business partner relationships.
• Specifically in connection with bribery, we will consider the expectations of the prosecutors and what your organisation can do to address these.

No conference is complete without at least one case Study: We will go thru the Role of Olympus's Poor Ethical Culture in the many issues that were created for this company:

• A sound company, with diligent employees and high technical strength can be involved in misconduct that is intensified due to poor corporate culture, will now renew itself.
• Directors should be independent, not connected to management or trade partners.
• Candid conversations, dissenting opinions, create a culture of accountability and transparency.
• Question the consultation of your advisors, approve highly complex transactions, how can a transaction generate economic growth if it has more form than substance.
• Whistleblower to "prevent misconduct by executives". The need to pursue an ethical work culture as part of any fraud response program.

Effective internal control environments in international organisations are central in many processes, reports disclosures and mandates.

Internal controls are an important component of effective management of any business because they increase the awareness across the organization. The challenge associated with implementing and maintaining an effective control environment is ongoing.

• The world and organisations are constantly changing, such that measures are subject to review and revision regularly. Ensuring that your organisation is prepared for this and that they are acting accordingly when the business may span a large number of different cultures is a complex problem.
• How an effective internal control environment can be established and maintained in an international organisation

We end the first half of the day with a panel discussion on the belief that Good Corporate Governance is Good Business

The panelist challenge is to find fresh ways to make important topics like Ethics & Codes to be relevant by engaging individual contributors and management in the conversation and creating a willingness to discuss these tough subjects.

• How can interactive exercises, small-group work, facilitated discussion, and multimedia to showcase how to create conversation, gain stronger insights, and make all elements of Ethics and the culture of Compliance relevant for your global workforce.
• Executive Compensation
• Sustainability and CSR
• Transparency

We believe that after all of the information, guidance, training and inspiration it's time for some Brain Food Lunch provided by the Radisson Blu Hotel Scandinavia.