The Board regards good corporate governance as an important premise for value creation, credibility and trust, as well as for access to capital.
Financial reporting
As a tool for managing the continuous follow-up and control of the Group’s operations, the Board receives a thorough report on the Group's status from the management. This includes the financial reporting of the Group’s main figures, the status of business matters, financial market information and a status report on each business area. The Board has established routines for following up and governing the Group’s ongoing projects. The establishment of an Audit Committee has strengthened this function in the Group.
The Audit Committee’s main responsibility is to monitor the process prior to the closing of the financial statements and to follow up the internal controls over financial reporting. This takes place through reports from management and the external auditor. Schibsted’s quarterly financial reports are reviewed by the Group Board. Apart from the normal examination of the figures, emphasis is also placed on reviewing discretionary assessments and estimates in addition to any changes to accounting practices.
Schibsted’s Group Accounting prepares the Group’s financial reports and ensures they are in accordance with prevailing accounting standards and legislation. In connection with the quarterly reports, general controls on the reasonableness and more detailed reconciliation controls are carried out in connection with the quality assurance of figures reported by subsidiaries and of consolidated figures. Group Accounting provides subsidiaries with technical acounting expertise as required. Quarterly review meetings are also held with the largest companies in the business areas Media Houses Scandinavia, Media Houses International and Online Classifieds.
The company’s follow-up of risk management and internal controls
Each manager in the Group is responsible for risk management and internal controls within his/her area of responsibility. Schibsted is continuously implementing and further developing guidelines for all companies relating to their continuous follow-up of risk management and internal controls over financial reporting.
The compliance officer is responsible for initiating and monitoring the annual risk management and internal controls process in the Group on behalf of the Group’s CFO and CEO. The compliance officer reports functionally and administratively to the CFO. If necessary, the compliance officer reports directly to the Audit Committee.
A bottom-up and top-down risk assessment of the largest companies in the business areas Media Houses Scandinavia and Online Classifieds were conducted in the autumn of 2010. The result of this risk assessment has been reviewed at meetings with the Audit Committee and the Group Board.
Schibsted ASA is a Norwegian group of companies with considerable international shareholdings. Companies outside Norway have their own governing bodies in accordance with local legislation of each individual country. The internal controls over financial reporting are monitored by these governing bodies with assistance from the management’s day-to-day monitoring and the external auditor’s testing.
For further information on the Group’s financial risk, refer to disclosure 9 of the group's annual financial statements.