" Corporate Governance is not entirely new to PLDT. It is the cornerstone of our strategy since the time that First Pacific made its investment in PLDT in 1998. The enactment by the United States of the landmark Sarbanes-Oxley Act in 2002 has proven that we are on the right governance track. "

On the regulatory front, our commitment to world class standards of transparency, accountability, and fairness is embodied in our Manual on Corporate Governance, Code of Business Conduct and Ethics in our practices, disclosures and related policies. We are also in the thick of our Sarbanes-Oxley Section 404 Compliance Project to ensure that our internal controls are sufficiently fair and sound to prevent fraud and other malpractices.

We are pushing our governance agenda further and cascading it down the line to our employees. Thus, when we speak of governance in PLDT, we do not only point to the directors and officers but to everyone. Because governance is everyone’s business – the Board, top management, middle management, and rank and file. For us, corporate governance is not just a set of rules to comply with. It must be a way of life, a set of habits, an attitude – indeed a culture – that will ensure PLDT’s future, indeed to success and prosperity, for the long-term.

This PLDT Corporate Governance website is just one of our initiatives to imbed good governance in each of us by providing relevant and material information about the Company. It is accessible not only to PLDT employees, but also to all other stakeholders – internal and external. With accountability, integrity, fairness and transparency as core values, we adopted a layman’s description of CG principles, rules and practices in the PLDT setting to make them relevant and important to all.

For us in PLDT, corporate governance is simply “Doing Ordinary Work Extraordinarily, Legally, and Ethically.” With that, let me lead the charge in saying, “Corporate Governance…It Starts with ME.”