Corporate governance - Vigil

Moira Conlon, president of Financial Profiles, Inc., discusses communicating with shareholders.

NASDAQ has proposed changes to its listing standards to require disclosure of third-party compensation arrangements for directors and nominees. After withdrawing an initial proposal on this subject, NASDAQ has revised the proposal, and it has been published in the Federal Register for public comment. Comments are due on or before April 26, 2016. The proposal is available here, and a redline showing proposed changes to the rule text begins on page 21 of the document.

MONTREAL — While speculation is already swirling about whether Pierre Karl Peladeau will return to head Quebecor Inc. after his stunning political resignation, his commitment to the company he... | May 3, 2016

The evolving threat landscape means organizations today must worry about far more than fraud and theft. As attackers become highly organized and also focus their attention on disrupting services, destroying your data, and holding your systems to ransom, the risk challenges grow more complex.

On March 30, Judge Rosemary Collyer of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia invalidated the Financial Stability Oversight Council’s (“FSOC”) designation of MetLife as a systemically important financial institution (“SIFI”). [1] Although the court found that MetLife may be deemed “predominantly engaged” in “financial” activities and therefore eligible for designation as a SIFI, the court found “fundamental violations of administrative law” and a designation process that was “fatally flawed.”

The willingness of investors to engage in activism has grown rapidly in recent years. About 400 U.S. activist campaigns are launched per year, and as noted by The Economist, the current “scale of their insurrection in America is unprecedented… one in seven [companies in the S&P 500 index] has been on the receiving end of an activist attack” over the past five years.

A metric known as ROIC, or return on invested capital, is all the rage, used by companies such as General Motors to placate activist investors.

Union CWA says it can influence Verizon with $1.3 billion worth of shares.

A firm’s default risk reflects not only the likelihood that it will have bad luck, but also the risk that the firm’s managerial decisions will lead the firm to default. Management risk occurs when the impact of management on firm value is uncertain, and, in principle, could meaningfully affect the firm’s overall risk. Practitioners have long understood the importance of management risk, and regularly characterize it as an important factor affecting a firm’s risk. However, the academic literature on corporate default risk and the pricing of corporate debt has largely ignored management risk. In our paper, How Management Risk Affects Corporate Debt, which was recently made publicly available on SSRN, we evaluate the extent to which uncertainty about management is a factor that affects a firm’s default risk and the pricing of its debt.

CRAIG WRIGHT claims to have founded the cryptocurrency. Our technology and business affairs editors debate whether his 'proofs' add up. Plus China's loomin

Company’s U.S. bondholders challenged method for distribution remaining $7.3-billion (U.S.) in assets

Boards’ risk-related responsibilities at financial services companies have intensified, with governance of Information Technology (IT) risk becoming increasingly critical.

A metric known as ROIC, or return on invested capital, is all the rage, used by companies such as General Motors to placate activist investors.

Valeant is a cautionary tale. What follows is a primer on how we connected the dots and on drawing the line between 'well governed' and 'total meltdown.'

The recently introduced “Brokaw Act” that proposes changes to the rules governing the reporting of ownership in U.S. public companies would expand the definition of “beneficial owner” to include any person with a “pecuniary or indirect pecuniary interest,” including through derivatives, in a particular security (borrowing the concept from the SEC’s insider reporting regime, which captures the “opportunity to profit” from transactions related to the relevant security).