ICGN Awards

The ICGN Award is given annually to individuals who have demonstrated exceptional achievements in the field of corporate governance and contributed to significant improvements in one or more jurisdictions. Candidates for ICGN Awards are nominated by ICGN members and reviewed by the Awards Committee which then puts forward a recommendation to the ICGN Board. The award is made to the successful recipient at the Annual Conference and highlighted on the ICGN website.

The inaugural Awards were made at the 2001 ICGN Annual Conference in Tokyo to Sir Adrian Cadbury (UK), Ira M. Millstein (USA) and Professor Hasung Jang (Korea). Since then, a number of awards have been made annually to pioneers in corporate governance.

ICGN Awards 2010

We are pleased to announce an extension of the deadline for ICGN Award Nominations to Monday 29 March 2010. The 2010 Award will be made to the successful recipient/s at the ICGN Gala Dinner as part of the Annual Conference being held on 8 June at the Royal Fairmont Hotel in Toronto, Canada.

The ICGN Award is given annually to individuals who have demonstrated exceptional achievements in the field of corporate governance and contributed to significant improvements in one or more jurisdictions. The inaugural Awards were made at the 2001 ICGN Annual Conference in Tokyo to Sir Adrian Cadbury (UK), Ira M. Millstein (USA) and Professor Hasung Jang (Korea). Last year Kaspar Müller, Chairman, and Dominique Biedermann, Executive Director, of the Ethos Foundation in Switzerland received the Award in Sydney and before that Nell Minnow of the Corporate Library from the USA.

Click here to download the Nomination Form.

2009 ICGN Award Recipient

The Ethos Foundation's representatives, Kaspar Müller, Chairman, and Dominique Biedermann, Executive Director, received the Award in Sydney at a ceremony organized during the ICGN annual conference, which took place from 13 to 15 July and was attended by over 400 delegates from around the world. Kaspar Müller stated: “The Foundation has won this Award thanks to unwavering support from the pension funds that are its members, the commitment of its Board of Trustees and the tireless efforts of its staff.”

The Ethos Foundation was created in February 1997 by two Geneva-based pension funds and is currently composed of 80 institutional investors. Its purpose is to promote the consideration of sustainable development principles and corporate governance best practice in investments activities.

"Ethos has distinguished itself by acting as a catalyst for company and corporate governance reform in Swiss companies in response to the financial crisis. The foundation led the call for transparency by financial institutions by calling for a special audit of UBS sub-prime related investments in 2007. In addition, Ethos has led the pressure for executive remuneration reform in Switzerland which is in turn influencing regulators and institutional investors in other jurisdictions. Ethos’ engagement led to the adoption of a new compensation model by UBS incorporating a system which will discourage risky short-term investments and encourage longer term perspective to the company’s strategy.
During 2008 Ethos started a campaign asking leading Swiss companies to grant shareholders an advisory vote on executive remuneration and as a result three of them - UBS, Credit Suisse Group and Nestle - decided to submit their remuneration reports to shareholders during the 2009 voting season.
The 2009 award to Ethos conveys a strong and unequivocal message to the market on what is expected on behavior and attitudes of governance agents around the world in a time of unprecedented crisis partially attributed to poor governance." Sandra Guerra, Chairman, ICGN Nominating Committee

Peter Montagnon, Sandra Guerra, Dominique Biedermann	Peter Montagnon, Sandra Guerra, Kaspar Müller, Dominique Biedermann
Peter Montagnon, Sandra Guerra, Dominique Biedermann, Kaspar Müller	Montagnon, Kaspar Müller, Pamela Akivaga, Sandra Guerra, Dominique Biedermann

"Shareholder rights have an economic value. It is therefore part of the fiduciary duty of institutional investors to exercise them actively. This involves the right to vote, the right to engage in dialogue and the right to submit shareholder resolutions. For a long-term investor, this means that a balance should be found between discreet dialogue with corporate management and public campaigning in order to achieve more transparency and accountability in terms of corporate governance and social responsibility. The most successful of active exercise shareholder rights is probably discreet engagement with corporate management over the course of the year. The future of engagement lies in more efficient organization of dialogue activities. To this end, it is particularly important to bring together investors sharing the same interests to conduct a grouped dialogue. The greater the shareowners’ collective weight, the more effective the dialogue."   Dominique Biedermann, Executive Director, Ethos Foundation