The Board is supportive of the principles and provisions of the Code on Board performance evaluation. The Board’s policy is to conduct rigorous performance evaluations internally on an annual basis, using external consultants to refresh the process every 3 to 5 years. An independent external consultant was used during 2011 to evaluate the Board, its members and its Committees. This evaluation was undertaken by Genius Methods and consisted of an online survey of each Board member, questioning their views on their own skills, the skills of the other Directors, the mix of skills on the Board, the performance of the Board as a whole, and the performance of its Committees. This was followed up by a one-to-one meeting between the Directors and evaluators to discuss the surveys’ findings. In addition to this review, the Non-Executive Directors held one meeting last year without the Chairman being present, during which his performance was reviewed. They also held a meeting with the Chairman present at which the performance of the Executive Directors was discussed.

The results of the evaluation were reported to the Chairman and the Board in January 2012. Overall the evaluation was very positive on the operation of the Board and its  committees and some minor constructive changes have been made to their operation based on the findings.