Corporate governance - Vigil

Canada will be forced to end tariffs on U.S. dairy products under a milestone decision Tuesday that could allow American dairy farmers to increase sales to Canada by more than $200 million annually.

CIOs in a survey said they expect sustainability to be the area where technology has the biggest impact in their organizations in the next three years

We will remember 2021 as the year that the pandemic did not end -- but we learned how to live and work despite the ongoing challenges.

Back to normal doesn’t mean what it used to. Following a year like no other, demand came roaring out the gate in 2021. While the pace of new demand has slowed somewhat in recent months amidst concern of new COVID variants, net new flows into long-term mutual funds and ETFs reached unprecedented territory. The $1.1 trillion gathered over the first 11 months of the year has surpassed all other years on record for the fund industry.

Bank of Montreal is looking to win a larger share of the shifting U.S. prime brokerage market by hiring two investment bankers from French bank BNP Paribas to build up its prime services business.

Colin Ryan will co-head the investment bank’s technology and innovation team with Kathy Butler, who is based in British Columbia. Mr. Ryan, who will be based in Toronto, began his new role on Tuesday. He arrived from National Bank Financial, where he was the co-head of the technology, media and telecom division.

Many corporate boards have made significant progress about understanding the importance of cybersecurity to the competitive health, operational resilience, investment appeal, and customer loyalty and attractiveness of the companies they oversee.

A twist, but hopefully not twisted . . . a slightly different take on developments likely to impact corporate governance in 2022. A list that doesn’t mention shareholder activism, cybersecurity, cryptocurrency, nor SEC regulation. What follows are perspectives offered from a slightly higher altitude but still within sight of the tarmac.

This post summarizes the key changes to their respective guidelines and suggests actions that companies can take to address them. We also discuss a recent U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission rule proposal that would partially unwind new federal proxy rule provisions governing the activities of proxy advisors that were adopted in 2020.

here is significant momentum in the U.S. and abroad for companies to provide sustainability disclosure that is reliable, consistent, and comparable. Certain members of the Securities and Exchange Commission repeatedly have signaled the importance of clear, consistent, and accurate disclosure when it comes to climate-related impacts. Although the SEC has not updated its corporate disclosure guidance in more than a decade, it has solicited comments regarding the possibility of a mandatory climate-related disclosure regime and we expect the Commission to pursue such an approach in the near term.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) rejected an application from Apple this week. In the application, Apple hopes to prevent three proposals from activist investors from being presented at the next annual general meeting of shareholders. This also shows that other companies that want to use the SEC to fend off activist investors will encounter obstacles.

“There is only one purpose that consistently wins,” writes management guru Fred Reichheld in his new book, Winning On Purpose: The Unbeatable Strategy Of Loving Customers (HBRP, December 2021). “The most resilient and sustainably successful firms consistently select one primary purpose: enrich the lives of their customers. Then they run their businesses accordingly.”

Sony Group Corp. said it would create a car unit and explore entering the electric-vehicle market, in another sign of how the electronics and car businesses are overlapping.

what alarms some close observers of China’s economy isn’t any one of these challenges: It’s the government’s unpredictable and heavy-handed process for dealing with them. Last year, this manifested itself in sudden and disruptive bans on online tutoring, campaigns against effeminate celebrities, on-and-off restrictions on burning coal and regulatory assaults on consumer Internet companies.

The drumbeat to add diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) metrics to executive incentive design is growing louder. Some companies are already far along on their efforts, and incentive design may naturally extend their strategic priorities.

The fraud conviction of former Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes could offer Silicon Valley’s culture of hubris and hype some valuable lessons.

Vancouver-based WonderFi Technologies Inc. will buy one of Canada’s largest cryptocurrency trading platforms to access its large client base and expand into international markets just two months after the Ontario Securities Commission licensed the first digital currency marketplace in Canada.

In 2022, new measures will be put into play that will give investors and the general public a clearer indication of how committed the financial world is to living up to its grand green pronouncements.

U.S. companies are turning to programs aimed at preparing women and people of color for corporate board roles in a bid to comply with calls from regulators and investors to diversify their directors.

Law firms, universities and current directors of companies have launched new or expanded programs over the past few years to coach prospective board candidates, offering training on topics from corporate governance to committee work. Some programs are free or sponsored by companies, while others can cost thousands of dollars.

The cargo planes will diversify Air Canada’s revenue and open new markets for the carrier, which was previously restricted to delivering to cities passengers fly into.

It’s management’s job, of course, to set company strategy. But board oversight is absolutely critical, and to really get it right, many boards could be even more involved. Directors see this, and many told me so in our conversations. Specifically, boards could spend more time analyzing strategic options that were considered and rejected—not just the path that was taken. They could look to competitive intelligence and widen the aperture beyond the short- and the medium term to focus on the long-term strategy.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has declined an effort by Apple to skip a shareholder proposal asking the iPhone maker to provide greater transparency in its efforts to keep forced labor out of its supply chain.

For many years, sustainability was little more than a footnote in corporate strategies—written on paper, but disconnected and low on the priority list. Yet the case for sustainable business was steadily building, underpinned by the belief that how companies manage environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues influences long-term resilience, reputation and ROI. Visionary leaders began integrating ESG considerations into their decision-making calculus in earnest, setting a new standard for ethical and responsible business. The nexus of inequality and climate crisis, alongside mounting public pressure for businesses to be part of the solution, upped the ante.