Corporate Governance in Lithuania

This review of Corporate Governance in Lithuania was prepared in the context of Lithuania’s accession process to the OECD. It assesses Lithuania’s corporate governance arrangements – the laws, regulations and institutions that shape company oversight – for listed companies and state-owned enterprises (SOEs) against the standards of the G20/OECD Principles of Corporate Governance and the OECD Guidelines on Corporate Governance of State-Owned Enterprises. The report reaches a positive overall assessment of Lithuania’s willingness and ability to implement these corporate governance standards and makes a number of recommendations to address remaining weaknesses. With respect to listed companies, the report notably recommends that Lithuania give priority to monitoring implementation of recent legislative reforms to strengthen corporate boards of directors and, in the medium term, consider further strengthening and clarifying their legal responsibilities. With respect to SOEs, this report recommends that Lithuania give priority to further strengthening the effectiveness of the state’s ownership coordination function, ensuring that the state’s requirements on board composition and disclosure practices are fully implemented by the SOEs for which they are mandatory and moving forward with plans to convert commercially-oriented statutory SOEs to limited liability companies.