 Welcome back to corporate governance and today we are going to talk about listed companies regulations. This is a very important aspect of corporate governance. We have been looking at the various dimensions, perspectives and again the various indulations and undulations related to corporate governance and now we have come to the listed companies regulations. Now, when we talk about the different disclosures of significant policies then it is very important that they should be on the company website so that everyone is aware and basically in the context of freedom of information it has become even more significant and also based upon the securities and exchange commission of Pakistan different laws and when we are talking about the listed companies then definitely their responsibility goes to a higher order because the shares are open to the market and they have a very broad shareholder base and therefore anyone investing in that particular company has to be very well aware of how things are being done and what is being done in that particular company. So the first and foremost policy is about communication and disclosure policies and that is what I was basically talking about that unless something is secret or is about a product and they do not want to share the contents of that product or those products then there has to be freedom of information and availability of information to the shareholders and also to the stakeholders so that they can take appropriate decisions while engaging with the company. Similarly, when we are talking about the board of directors then there is a code of conduct which has to be followed and also for the senior management and the other employees of the listed company. There has to be a risk management policy, internal control policies and whistleblowing policies. In the context of corporate governance and good governance whistleblowing is a very very important aspect but again what we see is that even though good organizations have these policies and in many times even the multinational companies have these policies but unfortunately they do not follow them or they are not implemented in letter and spirit. So there is a policy but its implementation is lacking and that creates a lot of confusion and a lot of ambiguity and a lot of obstacles for any employee to become a whistleblower because usually unfortunately what happens is that when someone blows the whistle then rather than the other people against whom the whistle has been blown and the evidence has been given and the investigation has been conducted the repercussions or a more appropriate word of retaliation basically takes place against the whistleblower and in that particular case many times we see that that the whistleblower has to suffer financially has to suffer socially and also has to suffer domestically because he or she is usually terminated from employment and has to bear the brunt of the different levels of management because he or she is considered to be a person who has damaged the company while actually in the long run the whistleblower is saving the company from future embarrassment so whistleblowing policies are extremely important there has to be whistleblower protection and there also has to be a proper way of investigating any complaint from a particular whistleblower the risk management and internal control policies have been talked about earlier in many of our sessions so I'll move forward and the next one is the corporate social responsibility sustainability environment social and governance rated policy so what we see is that nowadays CSR is becoming a very important aspect and dimension of good governance and corporate governance and therefore whatever CSR is being done that also has to be disclosed in the best possible way how is it going to be made sustainable what are the issues related to environment and the social and governance rate policies become very important and they're integrated into each other so that they do not stand alone and when we are talking about corporate social responsibility then it's very important that the company does not allocate those funds for their own activities what we have been seeing is that under the guise of corporate social responsibility the company is actually doing marketing and that is immoral that is incorrect and that is illegal so it should not be done like that it should be for the benefit of the community for the benefit of the society and again should be done without any vested interest in the activities or in the projects that are being undertaken under the banner of corporate social responsibility if we look at the brief sign-offs of terms of reference of the board committee then we talk about the audit committee we talk about HR and remuneration policies we talk about the nomination committee and also the risk management committee again a very important aspect is the key elements of directors and remuneration policies now when we are looking at all of these then a very important aspect is conflict of interest so in either of these different committees or policies there should be no conflict of interest there should be no gray areas it should be empirical in context it should be well defined it should be well structured and it should be merit oriented and the maximum protection should be given against nepotism and favoritism so that there is no compromise in the governance structure and management structure of a particular organization so what we see ladies and gentlemen is that in listed companies there is a greater need to disclose and there's a greater need to have freedom of information and there is a greater need to provide information to the stakeholders and the shareholders so that appropriate decision-making can be done free decision-making can be done and people are not misled or left into gray areas of ambiguity and there can be more clarity in the decision-making both within the organization and outside the organization thank you so much