Corporate governance - Vigil

Facebook  parent Meta Platforms Inc. appointed DoorDash Inc.  Chief Executive Tony Xu to its board of directors, adding outside executive experience to a group that has been criticized for its lack of independence.

For America’s public companies, election day comes every year when common shareholders get to vote on directors, executive compensation and other company issues.

But if you are an investor whose primary exposure to stocks is through mutual funds and retirement accounts, your role in this “shareholder democracy” is likely to be limited. That’s because votes aren’t typically awarded to small investors in mutual funds or exchange-traded funds. Instead, the asset-management company that runs the fund votes, by proxy, on behalf of the investors.

Car-sharing marketplace Turo Inc. has publicly filed for its initial public offering and said that some of the car owners and renters could get a chance to participate in the offering.

The hubbub concerns today’s declaration by the Business Round Table (BRT) that profits for shareholder are no longer the only purpose of a corporation. This is a big deal since for the last two decades this group of some 200 powerful CEOs has stuck to the mantra, “maximize shareholder value”, and its members have for the most part faithfully implemented it.

TransAlta Renewables Inc. says it will have to replace all 50 turbine foundations at a wind farm in New Brunswick where a tower collapsed last year.

The company says an analysis indicates that deficiencies in the original design of the foundations have caused cracks within the foundations and that they must be replaced.

International travel is likely to recover soon despite the progress being slowed by the omicron variant, according to AirAsia chief executive Tony Fernandes.

Climate change is one of today’s most salient policy challenges. Under the Paris Agreement, 195 governments agreed to limit temperature increases to well below 2, preferably 1.5, degrees centigrade relative to pre-industrial levels. Since the magnitude of global warming is roughly proportional to the amount of carbon in the atmosphere, the agreement in effect specified a “carbon budget.” To stay within that budget, emission reductions equivalent to what was forced upon us by the worst pandemic in 100 years need to occur every two years throughout the 2020s and beyond.

Future-looking boards also need to get younger, more independent and better-skilled in emerging areas, such as cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, and automation. The best way to do this is for institutional investors, regulatory agencies, and banks to band together to influence boards to require these four things

The age of stakeholder capitalism has arrived. The question is, how do businesses shift from an exclusive focus on financial performance for shareholders toward generating shared value for shareholders and other stakeholders? How do we make stakeholder capitalism more fully lived and felt.

The bosses of Britain’s biggest companies will have made more money in 2022 by breakfast time on Friday than the average UK worker will earn in the entire year, according to analysis of the vast gap in pay between FTSE 100 chief executives and everyone else.

As the impact of the pandemic subsides, company culture, talent retention and business objectives will shape the long-term workplace landscape. We identify below some of the key factors that may shape the 2022 compensation season.

Apple Inc.  may not have triggered the current buzz about the metaverse, but the company is reaping the benefit.

Excitement about how the iPhone maker could gain from a broad embrace of digital alternate realities has been a central facet of the rise in its share price in recent months, according to investors and analysts.

The Securities and Exchange Commission is preparing to force more transparency from big private companies, as regulators grow concerned about the lack of oversight of the private fundraising that has fueled their rise.

Apollo and fintech-focused private-equity firm Motive Partners are leading a $225 million investment that values CAIS at more than $1 billion, officials at the companies said. Franklin Templeton  parent Franklin Resources Inc. is also participating in the round.

This guide includes some suggestions and considerations for public companies in developing disclosure controls and related policies and procedures for ESG information.

On December 7, 2021, Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) published updates to its U.S. benchmark proxy voting policies. Unless specified otherwise, the new policies are applicable to all U.S. company meetings held on or after February 1, 2022. This year, ISS’s key policy updates relate to the issues of board composition and board accountability.

The policy updates are summarized below.

These are boom times in the fertilizer market, with record prices amid strong demand. But the world's largest producer is in disarray after losing two chief executive officers in less than a year, and investors are still waiting for an explanation for the latest departure.

Perkins Coie partners Kevin Feldis, David Daniels, and Jamie Schafer offer environmental, social and governance corporate resolutions for the new year and highlight key action steps to take, starting with prioritizing ESG and conducting an assessment.

The oft-overlooked good news is that the U.S., EU and China have each committed to a net-zero goal. The specifics vary but these regions collectively represent half the world’s GDP and emissions and with this commitment, the world is well on its way to net zero.

British online retail company THG has handed information to regulators over what its billionaire founder, Matthew Moulding, has described as a coordinated attack on its share price.