The International Finance Corporation (IFC) and BASIS jointly organized a day long workshop titled “Corporate Governance for Information & Communication Technology (ICT) Companies” on Saturday, June 02, 2012 at the Pan Pacific Sonargaon Hotel. Around 35 CEOs, CFOs and COOs from over 33 leading IT companies participated at the event which was moderated by Mr. Pratip Kar, a long serving former Executive Director of Securities Board of India (SEBI), currently senior advisor on Corporate Governance to Deloitte Touche Tomatsu (India) and professor at IIM Kolkata. Mr. Mahboob Zaman President of BASIS said “Bangladesh is currently receiving international recognition for the huge potential that exists in its IT sector, key strength lies in the young profile of entrepreneurs, therefore the time is right to also sustain this growth trajectory by strengthening the corporate governance practices of the companies in this sector.”
The sessions at the workshop included Business Case for Corporate Governance, Role and Responsibilities of the Board and Transparency and Disclosure. Valuation of assets and use of Accounting Standards was discussed at length. Mrinal Kanti Sircar, Program Manager, Sustainable Business Advisory, IFC , said “it is encouraging to see that the IT industry of Bangladesh is interested in knowing more on Corporate Governance and some of the companies are even willing to take up the practices at start-up” Local subject matter experts who also spoke at the event included, Barrister Sheela Rahman, Barrister Manzoor Hasan, and Mehedi Hassan FCA, Partner KPMG.