LUCRF Super Chairman dedicated to responsible corporate governance

Winner of the Trustee-Director 2010 AIST-Tyndall Educational Scholarship, John Carlile has recently returned from attending an International Governance Course in France, just in time to be immersed in the publicity associated with the “Centro Decision," which is a timely reminder to all trustee-directors that in the words of Justice Middleton “a director is an essential component of corporate governance.”

John Carlile is the Chairman of LUCRF Super, Australia’s first Industry Super Fund and is certainly an advocate of strong corporate governance, being a fellow of both the Australian Institute of Company Directors and the Australian Institute of Superannuation Trustees.

The governance course was presented by Dennis Driscoll, previously the Dean of Law at Galway University, now an educator of corporate governance around the world and a very passionate and articulate presenter.

Attendees in this course came from both developed and emerging economies being Germany, Moldova, and Nigeria with professions being either banking or  compliance with a strong legal focus.

The broad curriculum included areas such as roles and responsibilities of directors and the board, the business case for good governance, corporate governance in emerging markets, analysis of various large international corporate failures and Corporate Social Responsibility and Socially Responsible Investment.

The big take-outs of the course in Mr Carlile’s opinion were the increased demands on directors and the subsequent need to increase professionalism of directors as a profession, lessons learnt from the global financial crisis with respect to risk assessment and management, alignment of remuneration systems, and financial market regulation, and the need to progress and integrate further Corporate Social Responsibility within governance models of organisations, and of course the observation that in general, Australia is well advanced in the corporate governance stakes.