The Development of the Network

ICGN’s Extraordinary General Meeting held on 17th December 2007 approved three resolutions which enabled the ICGN to proceed to transform into a company limited by guarantee, limiting the liability of individual members to one pound sterling and forming the basis for an application to acquire charitable status which will reduce the ICGN's tax liability as well as that of those who make donations to the ICGN. See: Detailed results of this EGM ICGN's new Memorandum and Articles of Association

The origins of the ICGN stem from the convergence, during the mid-eighties, of corporate governance initiatives in North America and Europe. The idea of setting up the ICGN was formally discussed at the International Roundtable of the Spring 1994 Meeting of the Council of Institutional Investors in Washington DC. The ICGN was formally founded on 29 March 1995 in Washington DC when the first meeting was chaired by Professor William Crist of Calpers.

for a short account of that meeting, the events that led up to it and the people who subsequently brought the ICGN into existence.

ICGN Founding Principles were adopted at the Annual Conference in London in June 1996. These were the basis on which, in 2002, members approved a set of Bylaws that constituted the formal backdrop to ICGN's activities.

In 2007, at an Extraordinary General Meeting held on 17th December, ICGN members approved three resolutions which allowed the ICGN to transform into a company limited by guarantee, limiting the liability of individual members to one pound sterling and forming the basis for an application to acquire charitable status which will reduce the ICGN's tax liability.

Every year since 1996, there has been an annual conference where members meet and exchange information. These have been held in Paris (1997), San Francisco (1998), Frankfurt (1999), New York (2000), Tokyo (2001), Milan (2002), Amsterdam (2003), Rio de Janeiro (2004), London (2005), Washington (2006) and Cape Town (2007). Mid-year conferences were held in Delaware (2004), Mumbai (2006), Frankfurt (2006), London (2007) and New York (2007). Gothenburg hosted the first mid-year conference of 2008 in March. Seoul will host the 2008 annual conference in June and Delaware the second 2008 mid-year confernce in December.