Corporate governance - Vigil

Over the years, he became a trusted adviser and confidant to Ted Rogers, who founded the telecom and served as its chief executive officer until his death in 2008. Mr. Horn served as interim Rogers CEO on two occasions: once after Mr. Rogers’s passing, then again in 2016, after the departure of former CEO Guy Laurence. He also chaired the telecom’s board from 2006 to 2017, when Edward Rogers, Mr. Rogers’s son, took over the role.

The passing of Mr. Horn leaves an empty seat on the advisory committee to the family’s Rogers Control Trust, which steers the wireless giant through its ownership of 97.5 per cent of the company’s voting Class A shares. It is unclear how or when that spot, or the one left vacant by the passing of family matriarch Loretta Rogers last year, will be filled.

Lightspeed had about 3,000 employees worldwide before the cuts. The company said in a press release Tuesday morning that the cuts also represent a tenth of its headcount-related operating costs, and that half of the total cost reductions would come from managers being let go.

“Our organizational structure has become too complex, with overlapping roles and a top-heavy framework,” chief executive Jean Paul Chauvet wrote in a letter to employees Tuesday. “This bogs us down, creates inefficiencies, distracts us from our mission and distances us from what matters most–our customers.”

Audit Committee Practices Report: Priorities and Committee Composition, a survey of 164 audit committee members of primarily large-cap, public companies in the U.S., provides insight into shifting oversight priorities and practices related to audit committee composition. Over the next 12 months, one-quarter of respondents expect to make changes to the composition of their audit committee, with 25% anticipating increasing the size of their audit committee, 28% planning on replacing their audit committee chair, and 42% expecting to replace one or more committee members.

Outside China, covid weighs less on people’s minds these days. Yet health-care systems in the rich world are closer to collapse than at any point since the disease started to spread. Unlike for unemployment or gdp, there are few comparable, up-to-date figures on health care across countries. So The Economist has trawled statistics produced by countries, regions and even individual hospitals to paint a picture of what is going on. The results suggest patients, doctors and nurses did not escape the worst effects of the pandemic. Instead, the effects seem to have been delayed.

Le Québec est une des provinces où le secteur solaire est le moins développé au Canada. Le prix relativement bas de l’électricité produite par les centrales hydrauliques, qui répondent à 95 % des besoins québécois, est certainement une explication, estime Karim Belmokhtar, spécialiste du secteur de l’énergie renouvelable et coauteur d’un portrait de l’industrie solaire au Canada réalisé par le centre québécois de recherche Nergica. Toutefois, avec la fin des surplus d’Hydro-Québec et la demande croissante d’électricité, le temps est venu de s’intéresser davantage à cette source d’énergie, estime-t-il.

2022 marked the first substantial test of investor appetite for ESG activism. It might be worth remembering that the acronym, growing more ubiquitous by the day, encompasses a myriad of issues and concerns, means different things to different constituencies, and evokes viewpoints ranging from extreme skepticism to dogmatic belief in stakeholder capitalism. It’s also worth noting that the “G” brand of investing and shareholder activism is well established and widely accepted, arising after the governance failures at Enron, Worldcom, Tyco and others at the turn of the century.

RBC recently informed its personal and commercial account holders that it was discontinuing its use of Interac Online Payments, which had no fees, as of May 30. Going forward, commercial accounts will have to use a service provided by Can-Act Payment Services Inc., which is owned by software company Dye & Durham Corp.

RBC and Scotiabank both charge business clients a $25 setup fee for registering with Can-Act, along with a $2 fee per transaction and a minimum $2 monthly fee that is waived if there is at least one tax payment that month. (Scotiabank said users who use their Scotia Online service are not charged a set-up fee.)

To better understand the relationship between governance risk and performance, we have turned to our data. Morningstar Sustainalytics measures a number of ESG risks, tracking over 13,000 of the biggest businesses in the world – including their governance. What are these companies returning?

What we’re looking at in particular is governance risk – more specifically, the degree to which a company’s value may be at risk driven by governance factors. Corporate governance is a foundational element in Sustainalytics' ESG risk ratings and reflects the company's conviction that poor corporate governance poses material risks for companies.

Wendy’s also doubled its dividend and increased its stock-buyback program. Nelson Peltz, who leads Trian Fund Management LP, the restaurant chain’s largest shareholder, said Friday that the new capital-allocation strategy would support the company’s long-term growth plans.

The Dublin, Ohio-based fast-food company said Leigh A. Burnside, its U.S. chief accounting officer and chief financial officer, is stepping down to become the financial chief of a different restaurant company.

At least two-thirds of CEOs of the biggest companies surveyed said they expected the next six months to bring worsening customer demand, industry conditions, access to capital, and domestic and global growth, the survey from CEO advisory firm Teneo Holdings LLC found.

By contrast, among both midsize company CEOs and large investors, two-thirds or more expect improvement in the same areas over the next six months, the survey found.

Hydro One is what analysts call an “all-weather” stock, and it has the perfect ingredients for these chaotic times: Ontario’s electricity regulator permits rate hikes to counter cost inflation; the company has a sound balance sheet with very little variable rate debt; and the utility is now solely focused on its home province, so it does not have risky expansion plans that might put investors on edge. It’s steady as she goes, and shareholders are eating it up.

As veteran corporate board directors who are both women of color, Collins and Talton know the board recruitment process well—and the still-glaring lack of diversity that exists on corporate boards. Diversifying corporate boards gained urgency in recent years and some gains were made, but studies confirm that they are still mostly white and male. Business leaders of color acknowledge the many hurdles that they'll continue to need to overcome to reach parity.

Worried Mr. Musk has been distracted with Twitter while these problems mounted, many Tesla shareholders are fuming. In a bad year for stocks, its share price has plunged by around 70% from its peak, wiping out some $850 billion in market value. Mr. Musk personally has lost more than $200 billion of his paper fortune. If Tesla’s stock were to continue falling, it would further erode the financial underpinnings of Mr. Musk’s business empire.

Consommation qui résiste, aides publiques, économies d’énergie dans l’industrie… Face à la crise, l’Allemagne tient bon, même si « les pertes économiques globales ont tout de même été considérables puisqu’avant l’offensive russe sur l’Ukraine, on s’attendait encore à une croissance environ deux fois plus élevée », a commenté Fritzi Köhler-Geib, économiste à la banque KfW.

One of the challenges for boards is how to gain insights into the culture of their organisations, including whether staff are acting in line with the organisation’s stated values. There is no single mechanism that directors can rely on but we at Protect believe that effective whistleblowing arrangements can help.

Protect is the UK’s whistleblowing charity and our goals are neatly captured in the phrase “Speak Up, Stop Harm”. We were founded nearly 30 years ago and have accumulated unrivalled experience of whistleblowing. Our activities fall into three categories:

Microsoft said: “We’re continuing to work with the European Commission to address any marketplace concerns. Our goal is to bring more games to more people, and this deal will further that goal.”

The U.S. software giant and Xbox maker announced the acquisition in January last year to help it compete better with leaders Tencent and Sony.

With a new year upon us, organizations are doubling down on finding innovative strategies to continue to grow their companies in sustainable ways. These areas of growth include increased revenue, more effective corporate governance, to a greater understanding of their consumer, and the social impact that their organization has on the world around them. An area that needs continual cultivation is the role of emotional intelligence as a signature instrument of progress. The responsibility of nurturing emotional intelligence or EQ as a critical business tool has even greater importance in this ever-changing business landscape highlighting the prominence of mental health and wellness as a foundational piece for the future of business success.

‘With changes in [SEC] rules either proposed or implemented, you're seeing beefed-up human capital disclosure,’ said Micheal Dobbs, senior vice president and general counsel of Texas Pacific Land Corporation. ‘Different companies have different levels of human capital risk associated with them. Companies that haven't been looking ahead and tracking those human capital-related risks could have a much more difficult time [getting onboard] with the changes. It's a lot of data, a lot of information and a lot of different business areas.’

One of the most important technologies to address climate change got a boost Thursday when a startup said it pulled carbon dioxide from the open air and stored it underground. The company has cashed in on the effort, potentially creating a viable business model that could kick-start a new industry.