Pursuant to an exception for foreign private issuers, we, as a Marshall Islands company, are not required to comply with certain corporate governance practices followed by U.S. companies under the NYSE listing standards.
We believe that our established practices in the area of corporate governance are in line with the spirit of the NYSE standards and provide adequate protection to our shareholders. In this respect, we have voluntarily adopted a number of NYSE required practices, such as (i) having a majority of independent directors, (ii) establishing an audit committee, a compensation committee and a nominating and corporate governance committee, (iii) adopting a Code of Ethics, (iv) non-management directors meeting regularly in executive sessions without management, and (v) all independent directors meeting in an executive session at least once a year.
