Heng Swee Keat: Corporate governance developments in Singapore Keynote address by Mr Heng Swee Keat, Managing Director of the Monetary Authority of Singapore, at the 2009 Asian Investors' Corporate Governance Conference, Singapore, 19 November 2009. *  *  *  Mr. Tan Chok Kian, Chairman, Securities Investors Association (Singapore) Mr. David Gerald, President & CEO, Securities Investors Association (Singapore) Distinguished guests Ladies and gentlemen Introduction Good morning. I am very happy to join you today at this inaugural Asian Investors' Corporate Governance Conference. Thank you for inviting me to speak at this event. I congratulate SIAS and your partners on bringing together such a wide range of investors and corporate governance practitioners from across Asia. I applaud your commitment to hold this event annually, as it is necessary for practitioners to stay abreast of the latest corporate governance developments and to reflect on how we can do better. Corporate governance as an on-going concern Good corporate governance is a key pillar underpinning Singapore's reputation as a trusted financial and business hub. Over the years, we have sought to continually improve corporate governance in Singapore. This includes a review of the Code of Corporate Governance in 2005 by the former Council for Corporate Disclosure and Governance ["CCDG"], chaired by Mr. JY Pillay. In the last two years, following the transfer of oversight of corporate governance of listed companies to MAS and the Singapore Exchange, we have focused on strengthening the practices of corporate governance in Singapore.
This design worked incredibly well, as activity in most of the facilities gradually declined to near zero, allowing the Fed to simply turn them off with no market disruption. Overall, central banks were able to accommodate the most extreme shift in the demand for liquidity that has been seen in a generation, and to do so in ways that responded to the specific needs that arose in a market-based credit system. Structural changes in dollar asset markets Although U.S. authorities managed to provide the financial system with sufficient liquidity and support to stem the market panic, they must now find a way to foster more enduring changes that will result in a sounder financial system. The crisis revealed significant structural flaws, but reforms are being debated to address many of these issues. Some of the required changes are associated with the oversight of large and interconnected financial institutions. The reform efforts underway in Congress are intended to address several points of weaknesses, including gaps in the coverage of systemically important firms and the absence of a resolution process for an orderly wind-down of failing firms. In addition, regulatory standards are being reevaluated to strengthen capital and liquidity requirements and to improve the risk capture of those standards. The crisis also revealed weakness related to specific financial markets involving structured products, housing-related GSEs, over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives, triparty repo and money market mutual funds. Reforms are underway in each of these areas.