Brussels, 04/10/2004 (Agence Europe) - On Wednesday, the European Commission is expected to adopt recommendations to strengthen the independence of administrators entrusted with the task of overseeing shareholders' interests within company boards. The decision comes in parallel to the adoption of recommendations on the salary of company directors (see above).
The recommendations should fix some of the qualification criteria, especially for financing and accounting. A "large number" of the parties interested insist that members of the audit committees should have sufficient financial proficiency to be able to monitor the company's accounting practices, it can be summed up from the responses to consultations launched this summer and published last week.
The Commission should also suggest as a general principle that the number of executive and non-executive administrators should be sufficiently balanced to avoid power falling into the hands of a small group of individuals. The recommendations will define rules for the creation and composition of the different managing committees that oversee audit-related decisions, salaries or appointments.
Although there were more German representatives who responded to the consultations launched by the Commission on the subject of company directors' salaries, this time it was the British that provided over one third of the responses. The "per category" classification of the 78 responses received by the Commission shows that the institutional investors and the companies quoted on the stock exchange are the most interested by the question, with the two of them representing two thirds of the responses. The shareholders' organisations and "private persons" provided fewer than 10% of the answers.