Large companies increasingly subscribe to an established set of international standards of boardroom behaviour but national characteristics play a central role in how boards operate, according to a senior UK business leader and a director of companies in three markets.

Sir Peter Job, chief executive of Reuters until 2001, and a director of GlaxoSmithKline, Deutsche Bank, Shell, and two US software companies among others, said: "In each country, corporations are seeking and being encouraged by the authorities to seek improvements in the way they run themselves. The starting point is quite different in each case. The tracks forward are running parallel but the end point will be different in each of these environments."