CityU students win best corporate governance paper award
Joan Yip
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The paper submitted by Sardonna Wong Ka-yi and Ken Chan Wai-kit, Year 3 students in the Department of Accountancy, is written according to the given theme of “The 21st Century Board: What is an Effective Board?”. 
A paper co-authored by two students from City University of Hong Kong (CityU) has won the best paper award in The Hong Kong Institute of Chartered Secretaries (HKICS) Corporate Governance Paper Competition 2012. The pair also won the best presenter award for their outstanding presentation.
Organised by HKICS, the competition aims to promote stronger awareness of the importance of good governance among university students. It was open to all undergraduate students at local universities.
The CityU team’s paper was shortlisted as one of the six finalists. The other five teams came from The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and Hong Kong Baptist University. All six finalists were invited to give a presentation before a panel of judges.
During the 15-minute presentation, Sardonna Wong and Ken Chan used the Enron Corporation to illustrate some of the loopholes related to corporate boards and provide several recommendations to improve the culture and effectiveness of modern corporate boards.
The team’s strong presentation of their insightful paper won them both the best paper prize and the best presenter award.
“We are pleasantly surprised. Some of the competing teams had very strong presentation skills,” said Sardonna Wong.
The judges said they were impressed by our lively and well-organised presentation and use of real-life examples to demonstrate our arguments, she added.
According to the organiser, the winning paper should reflect the best in originality and clarity of content, robustness of analysis and strength and merit of recommendations.
The CityU team won a HK$15,000 cash award. In addition, the paper will be published in the monthly HKICS journal.