He certainly deserves praise, because yesterday’s initiatives are sensible and useful. Of course, we’ll see how things work out in practice, but it sounds good.
Medvedev Outlined Priority Steps to Improve the Investment Climate Medvedev listed ten measures which, in his view, should be implemented as soon as possible and could improve the situation. Read more here. Some important points: 2. Creating a mechanism for reviewing corruption complaints. The head of state instructed the prosecutor general to promptly prepare draft legislation establishing a special mechanism for reviewing complaints about the actions or inaction of government bodies that include corruption allegations. The mechanism must provide for the mandatory publication of the results of any review of such information if the allegations were made publicly. 5. Reducing the excessive influence of state-owned companies. To achieve this, Medvedev proposes setting and publishing a schedule for the privatization of large shareholdings over the next three years, removing relevant government officials from the boards of directors of companies operating in competitive markets, and introducing a procedure requiring the largest state-owned companies to publish information in advance about planned procurement. 6. Ensuring minority shareholders in public companies have access to information about company activities. To do this, Medvedev proposes making the legal provisions on minority shareholder rights more specific, changing the existing regulatory and supervisory practice in this area, as well as the operating procedures of companies that remain under state control. “Any violation of minority shareholder rights may subsequently be treated as an example of ineffective management,” the president said, adding that this work should be handled by the recently reorganized FSFM (Federal Financial Markets Service). Before rotten tomatoes start flying at me and people begin shouting, "We knew it! You’re a Kremlin project! You’re praising Medvedev!" I want to note the following: What I’m praising is not so much Medvedev as the Kind Monsters of corporate governance who helped me with my own program. They gave the right advice. Go here. April 27, 2010. For Sergei Guriev and Toni Samsonova’s program "The Day After Tomorrow," I set out my theses on reforming the governance of companies under state control. The article was called "How to Turn Gazprom and Rosneft into Something Decent in Six Simple Steps." ... Government officials must literally be driven out of company boards of directors. They have no business being there. If they are good officials, they simply do not have the time for it. And even a good official is a bad director. Practice shows that they read the board meeting materials in the car on the way to the meeting. ... In every large company, the board’s Audit Committee should create a system for anonymous reports of abuse (whistle-blowers) and declare a zero-tolerance attitude toward possible cases of abuse within the company. ... There are a number of company documents (for example, minutes of board meetings) which, under the Federal Law "On Joint-Stock Companies," must be provided to shareholders upon first request. Since anyone can become a shareholder, these documents are quasi-public. Companies should simply publish these documents on their websites for public access. Here you can watch, listen to, and read the program itself. So it can be said that Medvedev directly endorsed some key provisions of our program. I have no doubt that the lively wrangling around Rosneft, Gazprom, Transneft, and others played no small role here. Unfortunately, a number of very important ideas (for example, a voluntary-but-compulsory transition to the UK Combined Code) were not mentioned; instead, there was some meaningless chatter about "the president’s mobile reception offices." But still, better than nothing. If officials really are kicked out of Boards of Directors and Supervisory Boards, that alone would be a small revolution. Whether Medvedev can pull off that small revolution—we’ll see very soon. The lists of board nominees have already been prepared—and they include officials. That means extraordinary shareholder meetings are needed. It’s not a particularly problematic procedure, but it is a perfect excuse for those who want to let everything slide. Now they’ll start whining: extraordinary meetings mean expenses, organizational work, and stress. Let’s do it next year instead. So we’ll see whether Medved can really remove Sechin from Rosneft, Zubkov and Nabiullina from Gazprom, Kudrin from VTB, and so on.