Brief History

The Global Corporate Governance Forum (the Forum) was founded in 1999 by the World Bank and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) following the financial crises in Asia and Russia in the latter part of the 1990's. It was established to promote initiatives to raise corporate governance standards and practices in developing countries and emerging markets, using the OECD Principles of Corporate Governance as the basis for its work.

In its first phase, the Forum placed considerable emphasis on supporting public-private dialogue across all the regions of the world, working closely with the OECD in its series of Roundtable regional meetings that led to various policy papers on issues critical to corporate governance reform. During this period the Forum also supported regional director training networks; research on development policy issues relating to corporate governance; and, developed its first toolkit providing practical guidance for building director training organizations. See Review of the First Phase, 2003.

In its second phase (2003-2010), the Forum shifted its focus towards issues of implementation and technical assistance, focusing on the following areas:

• Raising awareness and building consensus for implementation of reform through meetings, briefings, policy papers, and conferences;
• Sponsoring research relevant to the needs of developing countries to underpin reform efforts by sound analysis through sponsoring papers and building sustainable networks for academics in developing countries;
• Disseminating best practice materials and publications and guidelines developed with leading global specialists and practitioners; and
• Supporting institution and capacity building and providing technical assistance to ensure implementation at the field level through training programs, toolkits and other direct assistance.

End-of-Phase Independent Evaluation of the Global Corporate Governance Forum, summary report, 2010.

To meet growing demand for its assistance, the Forum has embarked on Phase Three, a new strategy (fiscal years 2011 – 2015) to strengthen its global Knowledge Management Platform through:

• Introducing cutting-edge knowledge products to promote international best practices in corporate governance.
• Building the capacity of regional corporate governance centers that will distribute and apply the Forum's knowledge products locally and regionally while supporting South-South collaboration.
• Developing a monitoring and evaluation mechanism to ensure that the Forum's knowledge products remain relevant to the beneficiaries' changing needs.