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IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Tess Garcia 8841494, 8841493, 09189202052 tgarcia@icdcenter.org Institute of Corporate Directors 24F Yuchengco Tower 6819 Ayala Avenue, Makati City
Towards a Regional Corporate Governance Standard Makati, Philippines --- On September 11, 2012, the Philippines through the Institute of Corporate Directors (ICD) joins Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam in its adaptation of the ASEAN Corporate Governance Scorecard. The launch of the Scorecard is held at the Mandarin Oriental Manila with the majority of the top Publicly listed companies (PLCs) in the Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE) present at the forum. The PSE and the Securities and Exchange Commission are also involved in the ASEAN CG Scorecard forum through its representatives, Mr. Argel G. Astudillo, Vice President & Head of Corporate Governance, Risk, & Compliance and Chairman Teresita J. Herbosa, respectively. The ASEAN CG Scorecard is part of the ASEAN Corporate Governance Initiative of the ASEAN Capital Markets Forum and is funded by the Asian Development Bank (ADB). The objectives of the Scorecard are: To rank ASEAN publicly-listed companies To raise corporate governance standards and practices of ASEAN PLCs To showcase and enhance the visibility as well as the investability of the ASEAN PLCs The ASEAN CG Scorecard shall supersede the national CG Scorecard for PLCs that ICD has been implementing for the past 7 years. This means that PLCs governance practices will now have to be screened by more than 190 questions compared to ICDs old scorecard of 110 questions. The ASEAN CG Scorecard also has two levels. Bonus points will be added to the PLCs who have applied best practices or practices that go beyond compliance. The 2nd level has penalty points as well and these will be applied on PLCs, which demonstrate poor governance. The 2nd level of the ASEAN CG Scorecard shows its strong emphasis on companies doing good governance beyond compliance, which has been ICDs long-standing advocacy among Philippine PLCs. There are still similarities to the old CG Scorecard. The ASEAN CG Scorecard still adopts the OECD Principles of Corporate Governance. These are: Rights of Shareholders Equitable treatment of shareholders Role of Stakeholders Disclosure and transparency

 Responsibilities of the Board The ICD began participating in the ASEAN Corporate Governance Initiative when its Chairman, Dr. Jesus P. Estanislao FICD was nominated by the Philippine SEC to the ASEAN Corporate Governance Group of Experts. The ICD, an institute composed of its Fellows, has been at the forefront of Philippine corporate governance reforms for the past 12 years.