On the 21st of July 2020, the jury of the Manuel Olivencia Award (Cuatrecasas Foundation) has announced the third edition of the awards. In the focus of this year will be the assessment of the best management shown by listed companies during the COVID-19 crisis. 

Factors that will be assessed by the jury include the virtualization of governing bodies, transparency, the consistency of measures, as well as environmental, social and governance actions. Chair of the jury will be Matías Rodríguez-Inciarte (chair of Santander Universities), replacing former chair Manuel Pizarro. Furthermore, there are two new members to this year´s jury, Óscar Fanjul (deputy chair of LafargeHolcim and Ferrovial and founding chair of Repsol) and Rosa García (independent member of the board of directors of Mapfre and former executive chair of Microsoft and of Siemens in Spain).

The official call for submissions will be in October, when the period opens for nomination submissions, and the award ceremony will be held in February 2021. The panel of judges is made up of 15 members, who are well-known and recognized professionals in Spain´s business and legal spheres. 

The award honors the memory of the late Manuel Olivencia, a professor of commercial law at the University of Seville, vice chair of Cuatrecasas and chair of the committee that drafted the first Spanish Code of Corporate Governance in 1998, known as the Olivencia Code. 

The award is one of the flagship activities of the Cuatrecasas Foundation, that was created in 1991 and focuses on projects relating to rule of law and access to justice in line with the United Nations Global Compact and the Sustainable Development Goal 16: peace, justice and strong institutions. Apart from the Manuel Olivencia Award for Good Corporate Governance, the foundation created the Spanish Pro Bono Foundation, which is a platform including a wide representation from the legal world to develop pro bono projects in Spain.