Out of 61 public companies in Serbia, only 22 have appointed directors through a competitive selection process. Even more concerning is that in 19 of these 22 cases, the selected directors were the sole applicants for their positions, according to research by the Transparency Serbia organization.
The report titled Improving Professional Management in Local Companies highlights that in three companies, candidate withdrawals left the commissions with no choice but to select the last remaining candidate, effectively making the competition a formality.
The analysis also found that in most cases, candidates who applied for director positions had previously served as either elected directors or acting managers within the same companies.
Among the 61 companies analyzed, four do not have websites at all, despite legal requirements since 2012 obligating public companies to publish certain information online.
Seven companies have websites but do not provide names of their directors or supervisory board members. Another seven display only names without any biographies. Additionally, nineteen companies offer either incomplete biographies or information that is insufficient to determine whether directors or supervisory board members meet legal qualifications.
Regarding transparency, most companies were rated poorly. Nearly half (49.2 percent) were classified as partially transparent, followed by mostly transparent (24.6 percent), mostly non-transparent (13.1 percent), and non-transparent (13.1 percent). No company qualified as fully transparent.
The best-rated local public companies were Vodovod Leskovac with a transparency score of 78.3 percent, and JKP Dunav Veliko Gradište with 75 percent.
Generally, companies publish only the information required by law. When it comes to voluntarily disclosing higher standards or additional documents, the average level of transparency drops significantly.
Transparency Serbia noted that several companies justified the lack of publicly available documents by stating they are not required to publish them according to the Law on Public Enterprises.
One company, PUK Zelenilo from Sombor, explained that documents such as supervisory board meeting minutes, service price lists, data on monetary claims including debts of largest debtors, and policies on debt collection are considered business secrets and therefore not published.
The lowest ratings were given to companies regarding the publication of supervisory board meeting minutes and information about monetary claims.
Slightly better ratings applied to whether the companies make available decisions on appointing or electing directors and whether supervisory board meeting minutes from the past year are accessible.
Another concern is that none of the companies published information about the person responsible for handling whistleblower reports.
