SME specific corporate governance regimes

Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) arguably form a large part of domestic and international economic activity and as such are important in terms of their contribution to commercial business. Regimes on corporate governance such as Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX 2002) in the US, the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX 2003) Corporate Governance Council's Guidelines, the Combined Code (CC 2003) in the UK, and the enacted and other provisions by the OECD (2004) guidelines tend to focus on larger listed corporations and compliance issues, which are somewhat irrelevant for the most part to SMEs business in terms of day to day commercial activity. A Review of international governance regimes is undertaken to explore the possibly that the one-size-fits-all paradigm does not suit the SMEs in terms of compliance with auditing and accounting standards, shareholder needs and directors duties, as most of them exhibit a duality where there is no separation of management from control and hence no need for the agency theory driven governance regimes currently in place. It is this duality that has prompted a study in possible SME Governance regimes with recommendations made for Specific SME Governance Principles