Governance and Ethics Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 5000 words

Governance and Ethics - Essay Example Business corporation managers are required to manage business activities on behalf of the owners, while governors are required to ensure that the business is managed properly. Therefore, governors are custodians of the stakeholders. As a result, companies need to disclose corporate governance issues in their annual reports and ensure that they comply with principles of corporate governance. In UK, the principles and provisions of corporate governance are provided in the UK Corporate Governance Code 2012 (Financial Reporting Council, 2014). Companies listed in FTSE need to comply with these principles and provisions, and disclose their corporate governance activities. As custodians of the shareholders’ interests, governors should behave ethically and call for managers to act ethically as well (Crane & Matten, 2010). This leads to the concept of ethical governance which involves doing the right thing in order to fulfill the interests of a wide range of stakeholders. One of the FTSE companies is Barclays Plc is a multinational corporation offering financial services in 50 countries, with core business operations in South Africa, UK, and USA. The company operates under the regulatory standards of local and global markets. It employs 132,300 people and 732 senior managers globally. The company’s profits after tax have been declining from  £4,499 in 2010 to  £845 in 2014 (Barclays Plc, 2014). This is attributed to the sovereign debt and economic crisis that affected European countries since 2011. The economy is now in recovery and is expected to improve. In its annual report, Barclays discloses information about its corporate governance, stakeholders and ethics. This report provides an analysis of the corporate governance and ethics of Barclays Bank using the company’s annual report of 2014 and other research information about the company that is relevant to the concept of corporate governance and ethics.