Corporate governance - Vigil

Nvidia Corp. and Japan’s SoftBank Group Corp. are abandoning a blockbuster deal for the U.S. semiconductor giant to acquire chip-design specialist Arm after regulators raised antitrust concerns.

Pfizer Inc. said Tuesday that surging sales of its Covid-19 treatment and continued demand for its shots will likely boost the company’s revenue to around $100 billion this year.

The co-founder of Peloton is stepping down as chief executive after an extended streak of tumult at the exercise and treadmill company, which is also cutting almost 3,000 jobs.

Directors & Boards’ third Character of the Corporation conference was held online in December 2021. The event focused on human capital management, risk and compensation issues. Character of the Corporation addresses issues surrounding ESG, corporate character and corporate purpose and explores how boards might embrace stakeholder capitalism in addition to shareholder capitalism

Facebook’s parent company served up a stark sign of how Apple Inc.’s  new ad-privacy policy is roiling the digital-advertising world.

News Corp was the target of a hack that accessed emails and documents of journalists and other employees, an incursion the company’s cybersecurity consultant said was likely meant to gather intelligence to benefit China’s interests.

Frontier Group Holdings Inc. agreed to buy Spirit Airlines Inc. for $2.9 billion in cash and stock in a deal that would create a discount airline juggernaut.

Kohl’s Corp rejected a $9 billion takeover offer by an activist group for being too low, but said it would review other expressions of interest in the department-store chain.

Governments, regulators, shareholders, and others are making advancements in the push to net zero emissions, and they are expecting the same from companies. What do net zero pledges mean for a company and its strategic future? How should boards be thinking about these commitments? What is the board’s role in overseeing those decisions and monitoring progress? Here, we provide the tools for directors to lead what’s next on climate change.

The SEC recently has proposed rules designed to hamper corporations’ repurchases of their own shares, a practice that boosts share prices, providing enormous benefits to investors. The proposed rules will require the company to report the share repurchase within a day of the transaction, rather than the current practice of a quarter-long delay. Additionally, the proposed reporting would be more comprehensive. 

Companies often say that employees are their most important asset, but you’d never know that by looking at corporate boards. Directors largely come from the ranks of current and retired CEOs, finance chiefs, lawyers and investors, with a smattering of academics thrown in. What you rarely found in the boardroom were human-resources experts.That’s changing.

An activist investor is calling for the co-founders of Guess Inc. to be removed from the clothing maker’s board, arguing that sexual-misconduct allegations against one of the men threaten its turnaround efforts.

Rogers Communications Inc. has raised US$750-million in a financing – half the amount it was looking for, which will increase pressure on the telecom to sell assets in order to preserve its investment-grade credit rating.

After a short, inglorious interregnum, Conservative Party leader Erin O’Toole has been punted pursuant to the Reform Act, which permits a party caucus to remove a leader and elect a new, interim one by a vote without the broader party’s consent. But would he have been fired if he had been the CEO of a public Canadian corporation?

Choosing the right CEO is among the top priorities for board directors. It may also be their most important responsibility. But the approach that most companies and their boards have used to find 21st-century leadership is a relic of the 20th century.

A common theme of today’s ransomware attacks is double extortion: Not only will a threat actor lock a company’s files and demand a ransom payment, but it will also threaten to release sensitive information that has been exfiltrated from a victim organization’s environment. These threat actors may not truly care about the content of such data; it’s simply a money-making operation.

GameStop Corp. said it would launch a marketplace for nonfungible tokens later this year in partnership with an Australian blockchain startup, stepping into a trendy but unproven area of tech as the videogame retailer tries to turn around its struggling business.

Hertz Global Holdings Inc. on Friday named Stephen Scherr, a former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. executive, as its next chief executive officer.

Airbus and Quebec said Friday they will jointly invest US$1.2 billion (about C$1.5 billion) to expand and speed up production of the unprofitable A220 narrow-body jet in Mirabel and Mobile, Ala. Quebec will contribute US$300 million (about C$385 million), while the European plane-maker injects US$900 million (About C$1.15 billion).

Electric-vehicle startups and other green tech companies soared early last year. Now a wave of investigations, outside allegations and growing investor skepticism have sent shares down 75% or more for many of them.

The idea behind stock-market short-termism is that markets “induce corporate directors and managers to favor immediate but lower-value results over more profitable long-term results”. But which investors can be considered short-termist? And how is investor short-termism transmitted to corporate managers?