HARARE — Zimbabwe’s capital markets regulator has urged listed companies to disclose the salaries of their executives to increase transparency ahead of such requirements being made mandatory for publicly traded firms.
Such disclosures are part of the new requirements for the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange listing requirements currently being fine-tuned.
Securities Commission of Zimbabwe (SECZ) chief executive officer Tafadzwa Chinamo said shareholders of quoted companies should in turn push for more disclosures for better corporate governance to ensure that executives become more accountable.
“It’s something that we want our market to do and it’s something that shareholders should be pushing for. Listed companies should have higher standards of corporate governance,” Chinamo said.
“While the public sector does not have a corporate governance code, shareholders of listed companies would not want to see obscene salaries for their executives. As a market, we should have more disclosures. It would be good if listed companies see the benefit of disclosing salaries than being forced to do so.”
Recent disclosures of executive compensation in some State enterprises, municipalities and a medical aid fund whose membership is dominated by state employees have outraged the public.
Some public sector executives have been shown to earn monthly salaries running into hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Executive compensation has become a controversial issue, especially following bank and corporate failures during the 2008 financial crisis in the major markets. Many regulators have stepped in to oversee executive pay, while other governments have codified tighter reporting requirements.
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SECZ has in the past also raised concerns over failure by some publicly-owned companies to make full disclosures on looming crises despite facing capital constraints.
The country’s capital markets regulator has already engaged the Public Accountants and Auditors Board to review the level of disclosure by listed companies after noting that most companies were not carrying auditor’s opinion in finance.
— The Source
