OREANDA-NEWS. "New Standards of Corporate Management and Professional Standards of Corporate Secretaries", a joint event of the National Association of Corporate Secretaries (NACS) and Sberbank, was held on December 2015.

The conference was attended by corporate secretaries and corporate governance specialists from major Russian joint-stock companies and Sberbank Group subsidiaries.

Participants were introduced to the standards of the UK Corporate Governance Code and the principles and practice of the British Institute of Chartered Secretaries and Administrators (ICSA), and the changing role of corporate secretaries in British companies. Simon Osborn, Chief Executive of ICSA, gave a presentation on the aforementioned topics. The standards of the OECD, both old and new, were presented by Rostislav Kokorev, Head of the Government Relations Department at Moscow Exchange.

An important topic of the conference - professional standards of corporate secretaries - was covered by Oleg Tsvetkov, Managing Director and Head of Sberbank's Corporate Secretary Service and Chairman of the Council of NACS. The draft standards were discussed as a public hearing. This was a mandatory stage - discussing the standards at a gathering of the expert community prior to their review by government agencies.

Igor Rozanov, Executive Director of the Association of Independent Directors (a partner of the NACS) presented a new product to the conference participants - a remote assessment tool for the Council of Directors - and talked about its advantages.