Corporate Governance
Good corporate governance is about running the Company well. At HBOS, we aspire to the highest standards of corporate governance, not as an exercise in compliance, but as a means of driving the performance of the business.
Corporate governance involves putting in place an effective internal framework of authority and accountability that promotes success whilst managing and mitigating risk. It is also outward looking; it is about how the Company and its Directors engage and interact with shareholders and other key stakeholders. We aim to challenge and refresh our approach to corporate governance in order to keep it live, well embedded and at the forefront of best practice development.
This report gives detailed information on our corporate governance arrangements and outlines how we apply the principles of the 2006 Combined Code (the ‘Code’). For further information, additional documents can be downloaded from our website and these are identified on page 116.
Compliance Statement
The Company considers that it has complied throughout the year with all of the provisions within section 1 of the Code, other than provision C.3.1 which recommends that the Audit Committee should comprise solely independent Non-executive Directors. Our Audit Committee membership includes John Ormerod, who is neither an HBOS Director nor an employee of the Group. He brings an entirely independent and experienced additional resource to the Audit Committee’s deliberations which, we believe, exceeds the spirit of the Code, and is entirely consistent with the Code’s aim of protecting the independence of the Audit Committee. Biographical details for John are given on page 118.