Corporate governance - Vigil

With the college football season recently coming to a close, there’s no question who’s Number 1 on the field. When it comes to the top schools for turning out board members at public companies, there are also a couple of clear winners. A recent Equilar study using data from its BoardEdge platform uncovered the results.

Economic pressures, digital disruption, and rising job complexity are prompting universities to seek more “outsider” leaders for their top jobs.

Over the last year, the existential risk posed by cyberattacks and data security vulnerabilities has become one of the top concerns for boards of directors, management, government agencies, and the public. 2017 was punctuated by a series of headline-grabbing breaches affecting scores of companies and hundreds of millions of individuals.

The New Year typically brings upheaval among the upper echelon of America’s corporations — but this January saw the highest number of chief executives exit their posts in nearly eight years.

It stretches credulity to suggest that a unitary board of such a small size could fulfill its responsibilities effectively given the sheer scale and diversity of Carillion

On Tuesday, January 16th, BlackRock Chairman and CEO Laurence Fink released his annual letter to CEOs outlining a bold vision linking the prosperity of companies to their ability to deliver both financial performance as well as positive contributions to society...

Talk about starting a new year on a high: 2017 for the deals market, was one to remember.

In a stinging rebuke, the Federal Reserve on February 2nd issued an enforcement action barring Wells Fargo from increasing its total assets and mandating substantial corporate governance and risk management actions.

The accelerated interest in sustainability, ESG, corporate social responsibility and investment for long-term growth and value creation (the new paradigm) as most cogently exemplified by Value Act’s newly formed Spring Fund focusing on promoting environmental and social goals of the companies in which it invests; by the promotion by the World Economic Forum of “The New Paradigm: A Roadmap for an Implicit Corporate Governance Partnership...

The European parliament has voted to launch an inquiry into financial crime, tax evasion and tax avoidance, saying the Paradise Papers had revealed the “unfinished work” needed to secure fair taxation.

In the past decade, many household name companies, including Alibaba, Facebook and Google (now Alphabet, Inc.), have adopted management-friendly dual-class voting systems justified as giving their executives the freedom to operate the companies toward long term value maximization and sheltering them from shareholder pressures for short-term outcomes.

The share of equity investments held by institutional investors, such as mutual funds, pension funds, insurance companies and hedge funds, has increased significantly in recent years, and many such assets are now managed by specialized asset managers. A broad consensus has now emerged that involving these professional institutional investors can be an effective mechanism to improve firm governance.

Governance best practices increasingly call for boards to engage with their investors on critical issues; yet much ambiguity still surrounds the shareholder engagement process. Who should we engage? How should we engage? What does it mean if an investor declines a meeting?

Corporate governance literature has largely focused on listed firms with dispersed ownership, but those with controlling stockholders are increasingly important in the United States and Europe. In the U.S., the likes of Google, Facebook, and other technology firms have gone public with their founders retaining a controlling stake...