The Walker Review

Louise Gorman, Ann-Marie Ward

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingEntry for encyclopedia/dictionarypeer-review

Abstract

In response to the global financial crisis of 2008, Sir David Walker was commissioned by the UK Government to conduct an independent review of the effectiveness of corporate governance in UK banks and other financial institutions with a view to making recommendations as to potential means of strengthening governance in the industry. Specifically, under the terms of reference of the review, recommendations were sought in the following respects:
• the effectiveness of risk management at board level including the incentives in remuneration policy to manage risk effectively;
• the balance of skills, experience and independence required on boards;
• the effectiveness of board practices;
• the performance of audit, risk, remuneration and nomination committees;
• the role of institutional shareholders in engaging effectively with financial institutions and monitoring of boards;
• whether the UK approach is consistent with international practice; and
• how national and international best practice can be promulgated.
Among the recommendations of the resultant ‘Review of Corporate Governance in UK Banks and Other Financial Industry Entities’ or ‘The Walker Review’ was the creation of a ‘Stewardship Code’ aimed at making management more accountable to institutional investors. This proposal was adopted by the Financial Reporting Council (FRC) for corporations in general. Consequently, in June 2010, the FRC replaced the Combined Code with the UK Corporate Governance Code (2010). This chapter sets the background to the Walker Review. It proceeds with a précis of its findings and 39 recommendations. The chapter concludes by assessing the consequence of the Walker Review for the governance of financial institutions.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationEncyclopedia of Sustainable Management
EditorsS. Idowu, R. Schmidpeter, N. Capaldi, L. Zu, M. Bel Baldo, R. Abreu
Place of PublicationSwitzerland
PublisherSpringer Nature
DOIs
Publication statusPublished online - 5 Mar 2020

Keywords

  • Corporate governance
  • Bank Governance
  • Managing risk
  • Financial risk

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