Good Corporate Governance on Sint Maarten

October 05, 2009 1:48 PM

On October 2, 2009 Mr. Karel Frielink held a lecture on Sint Maarten entitled ‘Good Corporate Governance op Sint Maarten: wordt het een lange of korte weg van papier naar praktijk?’

LECTURE ON GOOD CORPORATE GOVERNANCE
BZSE law office on Sint Maarten celebrates merger

On October 2, 2009 BZSE law firm (BergmanZwanikkenSnowEssed) celebrated the merger of Bergman and ZwanikkenSnowEssed law offices and the official opening of their new offices in Belair with a lecture on good corporate governance. I was the keynote speaker and delivered my presentation in the Dutch language.

I argued that government-companies should be left out of the political sphere as much as possible, so they can benefit from a commercial, businesslike and market-oriented exploitation. That way they also run less of a risk of being used as milking cows or political toys.

Corporate governance is important in that sense, because the activities of these companies often affect the general interest and they must therefore be transparent and controllable. In my opinion, legislation and regulation are the answer where the public interest is involved, rather than government executing shareholder rights. I strongly suggested an independent, non-political board and even making the publication of annual accounts mandatory.

One of the central challenges is how to restore the island government’s integrity. It has become a bad habit for the island government to replace managing directors and supervisory directors each time when the island government changes party. The new corporate government code aims at preventing the government from wielding too much influence on the operations of companies.

Karel Frielink

Here you can read the entire text of the presentation.

October 5, 2009