The Conference Board, a non-profit business organisation has voiced its opinion on corporate governance.

The study tries to show what companies need to know and do, to improve corporate governance and compliance.

Corporate directors have to redefine their roles with management, strengthen independence and improve practice in key audit, compensation and governance committees.

Recent settlements at WorldCom and Enron, which required directors to dip into their own pockets to satisfy irate investors, have made directors increasingly anxious to define their proper corporate role, says Dr. Carolyn Kay Brancato, Research Director, Global Corporate Governance Research Center. "This new report gives directors what they need to know about crucial developments on the legislative and regulatory front, and shows how to determine what are 'best' corporate governance practices and how to implement them."

Dr. Brancato says that boards need to shift their emphasis in order to maximise their effectiveness.

A number of questions are answered in the report. For example, how to spot and deal with accounting issue red flags indicating fraud, making compensation consultants accountable to the board, robust compliance programs, restoring public confidence via governance processes and why strong governance programs can reduce corporate risk.

We have brought together what we hope will become the most useful reference document out there for corporate governance executives and practitioners, says co-author Christian A. Plath, Associate Director of the Corporate Governance Research Center and former head of International Governance Research at the Investor Responsibility Research Center (IRRC).

Since the passage of Sarbanes-Oxley, new Federal sentencing guidelines and new stock exchange requirements ask boards to consider risk in a totally new light, says Dr. Brancato.

Follow up reports included enterprise risk management and corporate governance,

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