​The Capital Market Authority invited all listed companies in the Saudi Stock Exchange (Tadawul) to participate in a specialized workshop titled “Preparing Board of Directors’ Report and General Assemblies”. It will be held in three cities during January of 2012. This comes under CMA’s efforts to ensure the application of the best standards in corporate governance and increase disclosure in board of directors’ reports.

The workshops will take place in three cities: Riyadh, Jeddah and Khobar. The first workshop will be on 14-15 January at CMA’s headquarters in Riyadh. The second workshop will be held on 17-18 January at the Movenpick Hotel in Khobar whereas the third and fourth workshops would take place in CMA’s Headquarters in Riyadh on 21-22 and 24-25 January. As for the fifth and final workshop, it will be held on 28-29 January at Park Hyatt Hotel in Jeddah.

The Capital Market authority Board has issued Corporate Governance Regulations in 2006 to encourage companies to adopt and comply with governance principles and protect shareholders’ rights. CMA also mandates listed companies to apply the requirements of clause (B) of Article 10 of the Corporate Governance regulations since the beginning of 2012 in accordance with the Board resolution issued on the 30th of October 2011.

The Authority started earlier to gradually mandate the regulations through mandating article 9 of the disclosure requirements in the Board of directors’ report and clauses (C/ E) of Article 12 related to the formation of the board and Article 14 related to the Audit Committee.

In 2011, listed companies were obliged to apply Article 15 of the Corporate Governance Regulations in addition to modifying the definition of “independent member” in clause (B) of Article 2 of the Corporate Governance Regulations. Starting this year, 2012, listed companies are required to comply with clause (B) of Article 10 of the Corporate Governance Regulations that are in relation to internal control systems and supervising them.