The debate has escalated, in the recent period, about the supervisory references to public shareholding companies, and as usual, this discussion has come to the fore in the media and social media platforms.
Everyone has their say in this regard, all of us forgetting that these companies have owners, namely, the shareholders represented on boards of directors elected by the public bodies of these companies.
The issue of interference in the work of public joint stock companies is not new, although it has taken a new form this time through the intervention of the House of Representatives and its Finance Committee in particular. As a result of the sudden decline in the value of assets, this led to a sudden deregulation of public joint stock companies from various regulatory authorities under the slogans of fighting corruption and protecting the rights of small shareholders.
Public shareholding companies are governed by the Jordanian Companies Law, which stipulates clear provisions for the way these companies are managed through meetings of shareholders in those companies, through which representatives are elected to manage the company. Holding it on an annual basis to display the results of the business of these companies and its approval or not by the general assembly (the owner of the company), the authority that has the first authority in accounting for the management.
The omission of this clear mechanism in the work of public shareholding companies and the interference in their work by the various supervisory authorities, most of the time without a complaint from those who represent the reality of these companies or under the pretext of small shareholders, has had dire consequences for these institutions, not to mention its effects on the national economy in general. .
The court yards have been burdened with an infinite number of criminal and criminal cases, and almost the largest number of businessmen have been directly or indirectly stung.
The results of all this on the economy were not relative, but absolute. Since 2008, not a single public joint stock company has been established, and not a single initial offering has been made, and the Amman Stock Exchange has recorded a record decline for 13 years, unlike all other global markets, all this is in addition to The complete reluctance of the economic and investment competencies to work or membership in the boards of directors of companies, and there is not a single law firm that did not provide legal advice to its clients, Jordanian or foreign investors, by avoiding public shareholding companies.
Finally, public shareholding companies are not an economic luxury until we deal with this file in this way of laxity. Without the law of public shareholding companies and the capital market, we would not have banks, insurance companies, an oil refinery, mining and pharmaceutical companies that we are proud of. All of this makes addressing this issue a government priority if The government was serious about addressing the issue of investment and rehabilitating the private sector that had been exhausted by interventions.
