In January, Baltic Institute of Corporate Governance (BICG) and Business Sweden organized a conference “Best corporate governance practices of SOEs in Sweden” in Stockholm, where the Swedish Ministry of Enterprise and Innovation, as well as the Swedish SOEs shared their knowledge and experience with the participants from the Latvian, Lithuanian, Estonian SOEs and their shareholding ministries.
“The Swedish corporate governance model is an advanced one. The participants had many questions and we hope that the answers that were provided will help everyone in their work,” says Paulius Martinkus, the President of the BICG.
Among the topics discussed with the Swedish officials during the first day of the conference were the level of involvement by the shareholder, determining and monitoring financial and non-financial-goals, recruitment of independent board members.
“Good corporate governance and active/professional ownership not only increases value of the company, but also builds trust in the society. Swedish SOEs are a good example of that,” said Guntars Baļčūns, Chief Financial Officer at “Latvenergo”.
The second day of the conference was dedicated to the company presentations of the Swedish SOEs, including one of the largest producers of electricity and heat in Europe “Vattenfall”, the largest train operator in Sweden „SJ“ and the largest forest owner in Sweden „Sveaskog“.
“The practical workshops with actual Swedish companies, like „Vattenfall“, were extremely useful for getting a better grasp on how effectively the communication and trust-based cooperation between the state and SOEs works in Sweden. We have still much to learn from our Scandinavian neighbours in order to achieve such balanced and highly integrated cooperation level. But even if there certainly is a difference in the level of corporate governance between the two countries, Lithuania must take gradual steps and create integrated system to develop such functional mechanisms for state and SOEs cooperation,” said Rolandas Zukas, CEO of Lithuanian state owned energy holding „EPSO-G“.
Gints Bumbieris, Member of the Management Board at the Latvian state owned forestry company “Latvijas valsts meži”, notes that presentations of shareholders and company inputs “provided clear overview how focusing on sustainable and active ownership can lead to long-term development of the company”.
“The two inspiring days at the conference boosted our competences and understanding on implementation of corporate governance. In the future we suggest to include also more representatives of shareholders to take part in this type of events,” said Mr Bumbieris.
