Review of Governance of Collective Investment Funds in the New Member States of the European Union

This review examines corporate governance practices in the investment fund sector of the ten new member states in the European Union, composed of the European countries that transitioned to market economies in the 1990s: the eight countries that joined the European Union (EU) in 2004 .Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia. plus Bulgaria and Romania which joined in 2007. Croatia, for which accession negotiations started in 2005, is also included in this Review. (For simplification, these countries will be referred to as the EU11.) The review draws on two sources for data. Over the last two years, in-depth diagnostic reviews of investment governance were conducted by the World Bank in two of the countries, the Czech Republic and Slovenia. The objectives of the reviews were to develop a set of good practices. for investment fund governance and provide specific recommendations for the supervisory authorities in each country. The second source was the public websites of each of the supervisory authorities. The analysis in the review also draws on a number of recent studies done by international organizations such as IOSCO and the EU on governance in the investment fund sector. This review does not attempt to replicate these studies, but instead aims to identify selected areas where fund governance could be strengthened either by laws and regulations or by government policies.