Corporate governance - Vigil

Nubank is targeting a valuation of more than $50bn in its proposed initial public offering in New York, as the lossmaking digital lender looks to join the ranks of Latin America’s biggest listed companies.

A regulatory filing on Monday revealed the Brazilian financial technology company is aiming to raise more than $3bn from stock market investors, potentially ranking as the third-largest US IPO of the year so far.

The Rothermere family are closer to taking the publisher of the Daily Mail private, bringing to an end the group’s almost 90 years as a listed company.

The holding company of executive chair Jonathan Harmsworth, Viscount Rothermere, has made an offer for the Daily Mail and General Trust, following an extensive restructuring of the business.

The bid values the group at about £2.9bn including a special dividend and has been recommended by DMGT’s independent directors.

Voters in Maine have rejected a proposal for a new power corridor carrying Quebec hydroelectricity to New England, dealing a blow to Hydro-Québec’s ambitions to become a key supplier of clean energy in the U.S. Northeast.

On October 3, 2021, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (the ICIJ) leaked the “Pandora Papers” – a collection of roughly 11.9 million documents identifying various world leaders, public figures and business executives as maintaining nearly US$11.3 trillion in more than 29,000 offshore companies. The leak, originating from the confidential records of 14 offshore services providers, included a wide ambit of documents, including passports, bank statements, tax declarations, company incorporation records, real estate contracts and due diligence questions.

It’s rare for corporate directors to receive candid feedback from their company’s management teams. The nature of the board of directors’ oversight role makes it an uncomfortable proposition. But the view of the boardroom from the C-suite can be illuminating—and surprising. That is why PwC and The Conference Board asked more than 550 public company C-suite executives to share their perspective on their boards’ overall effectiveness, their strengths and weaknesses, and their readiness to tackle some of the biggest challenges facing companies today.

The results were clear: most executives say board performance is falling short of the mark.

Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen has delivered her strongest call yet for Mark Zuckerberg to step down as chief executive of his social media empire, saying the business will be better off with a leader who focuses on user safety.

With the machinery of international trade slowed, business leaders are ditching, at least temporarily, overseas partners and the conventional wisdom of the global economy in favor of reliability, even if it costs more.

Some are moving workers and production facilities closer to home and relocating plants closer to suppliers. Others are buying their suppliers or bringing former contract work in-house.

Rivian Automotive Inc. is seeking a valuation in a range just above $60 billion in its initial public offering next week, one of the biggest and most-anticipated deals yet in a blockbuster year for new issues.

I'm more concerned about not being bold enough than about being too cautious.” That quote from a CEO summarizes a dominant strain of executive angst as companies emerge from the pandemic amid signs of accelerating economic recovery.

For CIOs, the challenge is how to match that boldness so they can not only enable the business’s aspirations for growth but also shape them. That challenge is all the more seminal because even a quick glance under the hood of the top goals of many businesses reveals that their goals are unreachable without technology. Like it or not, CIOs are in the spotlight.

PC pioneer Michael Dell is set to cap his climb back to the top of the computing world on Monday with one of the largest corporate spin-offs.

Dell Technologies will shed its 81 per cent stake in publicly traded VMware, creating an independent software company with a stock market value of nearly $64bn. Dell’s remaining hardware operations have an implied value of $33bn, based on its latest share price.

A Chinese court has approved the $170bn restructuring of HNA Group, a victory for the conglomerate’s state controllers that could prove instructive for how Beijing deals with indebted property group Evergrande.

HNA, formerly China’s most aggressive offshore dealmaker, said on Sunday that a court in Hainan, the southern island where it is based, had backed a plan to revamp more than 300 group companies into four new entities.

Royal Dutch Shell PLC shows much that is wrong with environmental, social and governance investing. The Anglo-Dutch company was the first to target reduced carbon emissions from customers, has gone further than any of the other oil supermajors to shift its direction away from fossil fuels and is closest of any of them to meeting the Paris carbon target. It even has a better ESG score than electric-car leader Tesla or hydrogen wonder stock Plug Power.

The result? Shell has been rewarded with a stubbornly low market valuation, is shunned by the increasing number of big money managers that have rejected oil investment outright and was the target of a successful lawsuit ordering it to reduce emissions.

Why are we here? That question has an easy answer. Sustainability, or at least true sustainability, isn’t yet a real priority for politicians or business leaders. The harder question to answer is, “Why not?” After all, without sustainability being a core preoccupation of most corporate executives and directors, it is generally accepted that the world as a collective won’t make meaningful progress against climate change, not to mention other urgent challenges like social equality.

Simply put, business leaders talk about sustainability as if it is a priority all the time. Business school case studies on the topic are piling up. Nevertheless, as a blog by the Ivey Business School’s Centre for Building Sustainable Value pointed out earlier this year, true business sustainability remains like the title character in Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, something that is much discussed but never quite arrives. And as we wait, the clock is ticking.

Anglo American has picked Duncan Wanblad as its new chief executive, replacing Mark Cutifani who is stepping down after nine years at the top of the FTSE 100 mining group.

The appointment of 54-year-old Wanblad, who has spent his whole career at the company and is currently head of strategy, is the first time a South African has run the company since Tony Trahar stepped down in 2007.

Businesses are increasingly falling behind on remitting federal sales tax, a sign of financial distress as companies grapple with the pandemic and supply chain problems.

According to the Canada Revenue Agency, the total GST and HST debt to the government was $14.3-billion in September, 2021, an increase of 24 per cent over the $11.5-billion owed in March, 2020, when pandemic restrictions began.

The boardroom battle at Rogers Communications Inc has once again focused attention on the perils of dual-class share structures that have enabled a handful of families to exercise disproportionate control at some of Canada’s largest public companies.

The turmoil at Rogers has renewed calls for securities regulators to prohibit dual-class shares outright or impose strict limits on their use, such as the inclusion of a “sunset” clause that would force the eventual conversion of multiple-voting shares into single-vote stock.

The unprecedented success of ESG activist group, Engine No. 1, in forcing management of Exxon Mobil Corporation (“Exxon”) to become more aggressive in tackling climate change could signal a new form of highly effective and innovative ESG activism. In a similar fashion, Royal Dutch Shell (“Shell”) has very recently become the target of similar pressure from the activist Wall Street hedge fund Third Point LLC. For companies operating in the energy sector and beyond, this means that boards of directors need to quickly up their ESG game or face the risk of activist scrutiny and action.

A legal fight in a New York state court this week over the multibillion-dollar fortune created by the hit dating app Tinder threatens to expose the inner-workings of Barry Diller’s sprawling media empire.

Tinder founders, including Sean Rad, three years ago sued IAC Corp and its online dating unit Match Group, alleging that the two companies controlled by the media mogul had cheated the entrepreneurs out of billions of dollars in a 2017 share acquisition that valued the Tinder business at $3bn. They are seeking more than $2bn in damages.

Yahoo Inc. said it was pulling out of China, citing an increasingly challenging business and legal environment, the latest foreign company to be caught up in Beijing’s toughening rules for businesses.

Yahoo said it had ceased to offer its services from Nov. 1, becoming the second well-known U.S. technology firm to downsize China operations in less than a month following the closure of Microsoft Corp.’s LinkedIn social-networking site.

DuPont de Nemours Inc. on Tuesday announced moves that would remake the chemicals company following years of subpar performance in its shares.

The company agreed to buy Rogers Corp. , an electronics-materials specialist, for $5.2 billion. It also plans to divest a substantial portion of its unit specializing in materials used in the automotive industry. The Wall Street Journal reported Monday that the company was nearing the moves.

Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) released on October 1st the results of its annual Global Benchmark Policy survey and its new climate survey. The surveys are part of ISS’ annual policy development process. ISS will release the final policy updates by the end of the year, to be adopted for shareholder meetings during the 2022 proxy season. This post examines key findings from the 2021 Global Benchmark Policy Survey that foreshadow shareholder expectations in 2022. Overall, the survey results align with recent trends of increased shareholder interest in environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues.

As he renames Facebook as Meta, Mark Zuckerberg is placing a bold bet on his vision of the future: a techno-utopia where people are connected and live in a virtual universe.

Jes Staley stepped down as chief executive of Barclays under pressure from regulators about how he characterized his relationship with the convicted sex offender and financier Jeffrey Epstein.

Coca-Cola Co. is buying full control of BodyArmor for $5.6 billion in a cash deal that values the sports-drink brand at about $8 billion, amping up a rivalry with Gatorade.

Coke, which already owns a stake in BodyArmor, announced the deal Monday, confirming an earlier report Sunday by The Wall Street Journal.