An authoritative global framework for understanding and benchmarking risks related to a company's governance policies and practices

Effective corporate governance has long been viewed as essential for healthy capital markets. Careless and corrupt governance practices, however, have thrust the governance debate from the shadows to the forefront, and corporate governance can now be recognized as a stand-alone risk factor. Many market participants now question whether true self-governance is possible or even realistic in today's era of razor-thin profit margins and bloated executive paychecks.

The Standard & Poor's Handbook of Governance & Risk provides a solid conceptual grounding on the principal themes of governance in today's global corporate arena. Straightforward and authoritative, with compelling insights into today's key micro (internal) and macro (external) corporate governance issues, this all-encompassing book:

• Provides a wide-ranging discussion of methodologies and criteria relating to corporate governance analysis
• Brings together diverse country environments in a common analytical framework
• Seamlessly links up-to-date conceptual and theoretical thinking about governance to practical performance issues
• Explores broader themes of governance--sustainable development, directors and officers insurance, behavioral aspects, and approaches to governance in managed funds and governments.

Highly publicized collapses in governance have replaced calm and complacency with vigilance and even stridence, often obscuring valuable and necessary aspects of governance that are long-overdue for discussion and review. The Standard & Poor's Handbook of Governance & Risk presents a balanced and rational approach to one of today's most emotional topics, and outlines an analytical model for both evaluating the governance practices of individual corporations and protecting yourself or your organization from the effects of incomplete, inaccurate, and potentially misguiding practices.