Narayan Murthy to head Nascom's new governance and ethics committee

Mumbai: Nasscom today said that it will form a corporate governance and ethics committee, which would be chaired by Infosys co-founder N R Narayana Murthy, chairman and chief mentor, Infosys Technologies.

This committee will function as a permanent sub-committee under the aegis of the Nasscom executive council. This is one of the initiatives being taken by Nasscom to strengthen corporate governance practices in the Indian IT-BPO industry.

''We are delighted that Mr. Narayana Murthy has kindly consented to chair this committee," said Som Mittal, president, Nasscom.

Mittal said, "His valuable experience and thought leadership will help the industry and Nasscom to reaffirm its commitment to the highest levels of corporate governance and transparency. This committee will look to work with authorities, policy makers and regulators, to achieve the objectives of this group.''

Envisaged as an 8-member committee, members will include industry experts, independent directors as well as academicians and will meet at least three times a year to formulate strategies and measure implementation schedule. Commenting on the announcement Dr Ganesh Natarajan, chairman, Nasscom and global CEO, Zensar Technologies, said, ''While the committee will focus on awareness and advocacy and share best practices across the member community, we will also be considering steps to further strengthen the excellent reputation of this sector in corporate India.''

The objectives of this committee will include sharpening the existing appropriate code of ethics, values and corporate code of conduct for industry; emphasising existing regulations and practices on corporate governance and re-drafting and re-affirming appropriate code of ethics, values and corporate code of conduct for industry.

This committee will look to establish and maintain credibility for the industry among customers, analysts, government, employees, society etc, and will also look to engage with relevant stakeholders and build a desirable framework for the industry that includes a ''model code of governance and best practices'' and a ''model set of financial information disclosures''.

Additionally, it will also develop and create awareness of best practices to be followed by the board, audit committees and independent directors of organisations.
 
Creating awareness across various levels of management and encourage formulating and strengthening of whistle blower policy will be additional focus areas for this committee.