OREANDA-NEWS. December 16, 2011. Company of China Ltd (hereafter "Ping An" or "the Group", HKEX: 02318; SSE: 601318) is pleased to announce that it has once again been named the winner of the "Hong Kong Corporate Governance Excellence Awards 2011", reported the press-centre of Ping An.

In the past year, Ping An has demonstrated outstanding corporate governance, gaining recognition for its business ethics and the professionalism of its directors from the market as well as experts. The award winners were announced at the award ceremony jointly organized by The Chamber of Hong Kong Listed Companies ("CHKLC") and the Centre for Corporate Governance and Financial Policy of Hong Kong Baptist University.
 
The Awards have been conferred annually since 2007. The evaluation process consists of the submission of applications, primary selection, a live Q&A section, secondary selection and deliberation by a panel of judges. The chief judging panel was led by Dr. Anthony Neoh, SC, former Chairman of the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission and Advisor to the China Securities Regulatory Commission, and was composed of distinguished experts from the area of finance, including highly respected academics. The winners selected by the panel of judges demonstrated exemplary performance in protecting and enhancing the rights of shareholders and in the disclosure of financial and corporate information. Hence, the winners are considered to be role models in the practice of corporate governance.
 
Despite the fact that the global economy has been facing downward pressure given the continuous spread of the American and European debt crises and the significant fluctuation in the world's stock markets plus the lack of investor and consumer confidence, the judging panel praised Ping An, an integrated financial services institution with the insurance as its core business, for its outstanding performance in the past year.
 
Mr. William Mak, Deputy CFO of Ping An, spoke on behalf of the Group, which was the winner of the grand prize. He said, "Ping An is honored to have won the 'Hong Kong Corporate Governance Excellence Award' for the second consecutive year. Thanks to the Group's highly effective corporate governance practice and risk control mechanism, it maintained its strong growth momentum while at the same time preserving its corporate governance structure. As a result, Ping An continued to record growth in the past two years. As a leading integrated financial services group in China, Ping An will continue to excel in corporate governance while further enhancing its risk management.
 
Ping An endeavors to optimize the Group's corporate governance structure, enabling it to become the first company in China to achieve the internationalization of its capital structure and to recruit senior management from overseas to operate the company in accordance with international standards of operations. Since its establishment, Ping An has continued to optimize its corporate governance structure, comprising shareholder meetings, its board of directors as well as supervisory boards. In addition to the existing Audit and Risk Management Committee, Remuneration Committee and Nomination Committee, Ping An established the Strategy and Investment Committee in 2010 with the aim of managing investment projects more effectively and further reducing risk. Its diversified ownership structure, highly responsible supervisory board, internationalized Board of Directors, and sound decision-making mechanism safeguard the sustainability and stability of the Group's development.