Economic Policy Reform and Competitiveness Project

On 18-20 June, in cooperation with The Press Institute (PI) and the Corporate Governance Development Center (CGDC), the project hosted a two-day workshop on ‘Corporate Governance for Investigative Journalists.’ Participants included twenty journalists from newspapers, television and online news media,  including nine members of the EPRC-sponsored Economics Journalism Club. The workshop investigative brought journalists together with facilitators from the three sponsoring institutions to learn about global best practices for corporate governance; how corporate governance will help improve competitiveness of firms; and how investigative journalists can play a catalytic role between the public and corporations. Lectures and discussions covered the following topics:

• Introduction and history of investigative journalism
• Introduction to corporate governance
• Relationships between the shareholders, the board, and management
• Ethics of investigative journalists
• Techniques for effective interviews
• The role of the board in transparency, disclosure, and corporate citizenship
• Corporate social responsibility

Participants discussed contemporary international and Mongolian cases and were particularly interested in discussing the Anod Bank failure and the banking crisis in Mongolia and globally; the Ivanhoe and Rio Tinto mining deals in Mongolia; BP and the oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico; corporate social responsibilities of shareholders; and how stock prices are formed and how they behave in the stock exchange.

The workshop responded to journalists’ and growing public interest in issues of coporate governance, business competitiveness, access to information, and analysis of political, financial, and economic issues. Following the workshop, five participants published articles and interviews highlighting the importance of corporate disclosure: “Companies without corporate governance will cease to exist,” by Ms. B. Ariunzaya of UB Times and “Who needs corporate governance,” by Ms. A. Tuya of The Peoples’ Rights, interviews with J.Unenbat and Demir Yener by A.Bold of The Century News, “Lack of GC means that company’s activity will not continue longer” by O.Nyamsuren of The Morning News, and two news websites news.mn and gogo.mn published articles about corporate governance issues.