The Institute of Directors is a non-governmental organization with a mission to improve the business environment by promoting the excellence in corporate governance, as well as to ensure respect for the directors’ function and protection of directors’ interests by improving their professionalism, skills and status. It is supported by the International Finance Corporation (IFC), which is part of the World Bank Group and by the Swiss Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO).

Leonardo Peklar, the founder of the Institute of Directors of Slovenia considers that it is very important to establish associations of Directors in the region of South-East Europe, because this form of association is underdeveloped.

Directors have the same function in corporate governance as the parliament in the political system. I think that the corporate governance is the reason for the economic crises that is happening right now ... The directors should not be the only ones to be blamed.  The owners, the politics, and members of boards should take their part of the responsibility, too. Here, I refer to the owners whose sole interest was the generation of profit, without thinking about the sustainability of the companies, and also to the directors who failed to perform their job well, and also to the countries that have good legislation on paper, but not applied in practice, Peklar stated.

He emphasized that in Slovenia, the crises was felt in the financial and real-estate sector, and only afterwards in the real sector, especially in the automobile industry. Currently in Slovenia, as he stated, there were approximately 80,000 unemployed persons, while the expectations about the growth of GDP were moving around 2%.

The Institute will adopt regulations related to the managerial profession. It will also organize trainings and forums, meetings and similar events. The Institute also announced the preparation of a register of managers.

Source: web-site of Macedonian Information Agency