The Board of Liberty International is responsible to all shareholders and stakeholders for the effective control and proper management of the group as a whole. The Board’s overriding objective is to ensure the group delivers long-term sustainable growth in returns for its shareholders.

Best practice and corporate governance

Liberty International is required to comply with the “Combined Code – Principles of Good Governance and Code of Best Practice” issued by the Financial Reporting Council in 2003 and revised and re-issued in 2006.

Liberty International recognises that corporate governance is not an end in itself but an important means to an end. The Code contains no definition of corporate governance. The first supporting principle it contains, at provision A. 1, reads as follows:

“The Board’s role is to provide entrepreneurial leadership of the company within a framework of prudent and effective controls which enables risk to be assessed and managed. The Board should set the company’s strategic aims, ensure that the necessary financial and human resources are in place for the company to meet its objectives and review management performance. The Board should set the company’s values and standards and ensure that its obligations to its shareholders and others are understood and met.”

The Board believes that any system which is adopted must also be geared to meeting the necessary standards of accountability and probity and considers that the processes which it has adopted do so.

The company has also demonstrated a strong commitment to high standards of Corporate Responsibility, (see our Corporate Responsibility report 2007) and has been included in the FTSE4Good listing and the JSE SRI Index.

The Board is accountable to the company’s shareholders for the good conduct of the company’s affairs and the information and statements set out in the Corporate Governance Section of the 2007 Annual Report describe how the principles contained in the Code are applied by the company.