Coded explanations

The UK’s “comply or explain” governance code is widely hailed as a success, but the quality of explanations is open to question. Philip J. Shrives leads us on a tour of the problems.
A Bank of England report in the late 1980s examined the possibility that the UK’s corporate governance was not quite as strong as countries such as Germany or Japan.
As a result, the Cadbury Committee was formed and its subsequent report, produced 23 years ago, has had a profound influence on corporate governance (and indeed other systems) throughout the world.
A key aspect of this report was the celebrated "comply or explain" system. Based on the idea that "one size did not (necessarily) fit all", the
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