This growing interest is no stranger to the succession of corporate scandals with wide-reaching public repercussions, even before the financial crisis, as was the case of Barings Bank (1995), Enron (2002) and Parmalat (2003) – to name some of the most notorious – which in some way motivated the production of a set of corporate governance best practices by international organisations of note such as the OECD, World Bank and Basel Committee, amongst others.
But it was the financial crisis that began in 2007 and its tremendous consequences that brought the theme of corporate governance to the forefront of public policy, including in regulatory terms, in the most affected countries and the European Union.