The Hawkamah Journal issue 01/2013 | Page 23

THE GENEALOGY OF HAWKAMAH 1. You were involved with Hawkamah from the very beginning. It has been quite a journey, but could you please take us through the early days – why and how was the Institute set up? The institute was started to respond to an articulated regional need to address corporate governance in 2. Could please describe the initial governance landscape in the Middle East and North Africa? What were the early challenges? And how did Hawkamah address those challenges? associations and chambers of commerce and also having discussions with regulators on corporate governance and discovered a severe mismatch in understanding of corporate governance between the regulators and the private sector who would be directly impacted with of regional dialogues to bring together various critical review of the corporate governance principles in and drive discussions on corporate governance concerns has had a role in trying to bridge the understanding on corporate governance but also facilitating discussions on appropriate regional approaches on corporate as the regional platform we became more focused on 21