China Bank among top winners in ASEAN governance awards

MANILA, Philippines — China Banking Corp. (China Bank) again emerged as one of the top winners in the Philippines at the ASEAN Corporate Governance Scorecard (ACGS) Awards of the ASEAN Capital Markets Forum (ACMF) for the 2019 assessment year.

At the virtual awarding last Jan. 29 organized by the Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Institute of Corporate Directors (ICD), China Bank was conferred the Top 3 Philippine Publicly Listed Company (PLC) Award, the Top 20 ASEAN PLC Award, and the ASEAN Asset Class Award.

The ACMF assessed and ranked all PLCs in the participating ASEAN countries according to their overall ACGS scores.

For the Top 20 ASEAN PLC Award, given to the top 20 companies with the highest ACGS scores in the region, four are from the Philippines, including China Bank and SM Prime.

And out of the top 20 in ASEAN, ACMF ranked the top three highest scoring PLCs per country: China Bank, Ayala Land, and Globe for the Philippines.

Those that obtained a score of 97.5 points and above (i.e. at least 75 percent of the maximum attainable score of 130) received an ASEAN Asset Class Award.  Of the 135 recipients, 18 are from the Philippines, including seven SM Group companies: China Bank, 2Go, BDO, Belle Corp., Premium Leisure, SMIC, and SM Prime.
This is the second time that China Bank was named by the ACMF as one of the best-governed companies in the region.

In 2018, China Bank ranked among the top 11 to 30 among the top 50 PLCs in ASEAN, and one of the top three PLCs in the Philippines.  Meanwhile, ICD, the domestic ranking body for the ACGS, conferred a four-Arrow Recognition to China Bank at ICD’s Golden Arrow Awarding in 2019.

The four-arrow recognition represents the Bank’s achievement of scoring 110 to 119 points out of the 130 highest possible points in the 2018 ACGS.

The ACGS is an assessment based on publicly-available information and benchmarked against international best practices on corporate governance. This is supported by a rigorous methodology developed by corporate governance experts across the region to assess the corporate governance standing and performance of publicly listed companies in the six participating ASEAN member countries namely: Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam.