Corporate governance in 2026: your outlook for the next twelve months and a complete rundown of what you need to know. The turbulence of the 2020s will continue; let’s just get that out of the way first. Not all of it will be negative; in fact, this decade is as much about leaps forward as it is about unexpected hurdles. Still, there’s no getting away from the fact that the next twelve months will continue to demand the best from directors and other corporate leaders if they’re to rise to the challenge of this dynamic, chaotic modern governance environment, which is so far gone from “business-as-usual”.  Below, we dive deeper into the most pressing issues and trends for directors in 2026.

Bill Ackman’s Howard Hughes has announced a deal to acquire a Bermuda-based insurance company for $2.1bn, as the activist investor seeks to build what he has called a “modern-day Berkshire Hathaway”. Howard Hughes will finance the $2.1bn purchase of Vantage Risk using a combination of cash and an investment in its own stock worth up to $1bn by Ackman’s hedge fund Pershing Square. The billionaire has set out plans to transform Texas-based Howard Hughes from a real estate company into a sprawling business in the mould of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, using it to acquire controlling interests in operating companies. Pershing Square is the largest shareholder in Howard Hughes, which has languished on public markets for a decade. “The acquisition of Vantage is a milestone event in the transformation of Howard Hughes into a diversified holding company,” Ackman said in a statement on Thursday. Pershing will manage Vantage’s assets, Howard Hughes said.

South Korea is among the best-performing major equity markets in the world this year, closing in on the strongest annual gains in a quarter century with the benchmark Kospi index up nearly 70 per cent in the year to date. President Lee Jae Myung and his ruling Democratic party came to power in June with an aim to foster conditions to enable the Kospi to reach the 5,000 level. At the time, the target seemed like a moonshot given the index was trading around 2700. And yet, here we are with the index already at 4000. A big factor behind the rise is South Korea’s corporate governance transformation, which I estimate has driven 40 to 50 per cent of this year’s returns, with the other largest factor being the global artificial intelligence-related rally. Lee won office with a reform agenda aimed squarely at removing the “Korea discount” that has plagued local stocks despite world-class innovation at world-class companies.

BP has named Meg O'Neill, chief executive of Australia's Woodside Energy, as its next CEO, signalling a renewed push to boost returns and double down on oil and gas after retreating from an ambitious renewables strategy. O'Neill, who will take over in April following the abrupt exit of Murray Auchincloss, becomes BP's first external CEO in its more than century-long history and the first woman to lead any of the world's top five oil majors. "This is a really positive update, as Murray Auchinloss was one of the chief architects of the disastrous pivot towards low margin renewables that BP undertook under disgraced former CEO Bernard Looney. His uninspired leadership has seen BP underperform peers for a number of years." "Ms. O'Neill does have a job on her hands as the balance sheet is in poor shape and the bloated cost base needs to be addressed."

Two peer-to-peer boat-rental platforms are merging. Boatsetter and GetMyBoat, online platforms that allow users to rent boats of various types from other users, have signed a deal to combine, Boatsetter Chief Executive Michael Farb told The Wall Street Journal. The deal is set to be announced Thursday. Boatsetter, based in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., is backed by private-equity firms Level Equity and Centerbridge Partners. GetMyBoat is majority-owned by Japanese engine manufacturer Yanmar. All three backers will continue to hold ownership stakes in the combined company, Farb said. The combined company is expected to have more than $100 million in bookings this year, Farb said. It is set to reach profitability next year and is planning an international expansion, he added.

Warner Bros. Discovery sent a message to Larry Ellison: If you want to buy our company, sign on the dotted line yourself. Warner urged its shareholders Wednesday morning to reject Paramount Skydance’s hostile takeover bid, saying the Ellison family-led bid was inadequate on multiple levels compared with that of rival Netflix. Warner said it had lingering concerns about the financing, including the use of an Ellison family trust to backstop the deal. The company wants Larry Ellison to give a stronger personal guarantee that he, not an opaque trust, is fully committed to the $77.9 billion bid.  Ellison, the billionaire founder of Oracle ORCL 2.62%increase; green up pointing triangle, is among the world’s richest men, even briefly holding the title of the richest this year. Yet his son David Ellison is fighting over Warner just as Oracle’s shares are under pressure over concerns about its bets on the artificial-intelligence boom. The stock fell 5% on Wednesday on reports of a potential financial partner spurning a data center Oracle was building.

Activist investor Elliott Management has amassed a stake of more than US$1-billion in Lululemon Athletica and is lining up a potential CEO candidate as it pushes to revive the struggling athletic apparel retailer, a source told Reuters on Wednesday. Elliott has been working closely for months with veteran retail executive Jane Nielsen, former chief financial officer and chief operations officer at Ralph Lauren, and views her as a potential CEO candidate, the source added. The hedge fund is now one of Lululemon’s biggest investors, with the move coming amid a busy year for Elliott that already includes a recent investment in PepsiCo and an earlier proxy fight at Phillips 66. Shares of Lululemon were up nearly 5 per cent at US$217.23 in premarket trading on Thursday.

Dye & Durham Ltd. has bought itself more time to file its delayed financial statements without triggering a debt default and started a process to sell the company. The beleaguered Toronto legal software company had promised its overdue statements for its fiscal year ended June 30 and subsequent first quarter would be delivered sometime this week – but it also had until today under its senior credit agreement to file, or else it would have been in default. D&D said in a release late Wednesday that it had secured a two-month extension to the deadline in exchange for an unspecified consent fee and revealed it now expects the late statements to be filed next week. The company’s stock has been subject to a cease-trade order this week by the Ontario Securities Commission because of the tardy statements; it is expected to lift once the statements are filed.

Les autorités californiennes menacent de suspendre la licence de Tesla pour la vente de ses voitures électriques dans l’État au début de l’année prochaine, à moins que le constructeur automobile ne modère ses stratégies de marketing concernant ses fonctionnalités de conduite autonome. Un juge a conclu que l’entreprise dirigée par Elon Musk avait induit les consommateurs en erreur quant aux capacités de cette technologie. La suspension potentielle de 30 jours des ventes de Tesla en Californie est la principale sanction recommandée au département des véhicules motorisés de l’État dans une décision rendue mardi soir. La juge administrative Juliet Cox a estimé que Tesla s’était livrée pendant des années à des pratiques commerciales trompeuses en utilisant les termes « Pilotage automatique » et « Conduite entièrement autonome » pour promouvoir la technologie autonome disponible dans bon nombre de ses voitures.  

Critiquée par son deuxième actionnaire Pierre Karl Péladeau, qui souhaite forcer son arrivée aux commandes, Transat A.T. a dégagé un premier profit annuel depuis 2018 au terme d’une année mouvementée. Le spécialiste du voyage d’agrément couronne son exercice financier terminé le 31 octobre dernier avec un bénéfice net de 242 millions, ou 6,06 $ l’action, comparativement à une perte nette de 114 millions, ou 2,94 $ par action, en 2024. Son chiffre d’affaires a avancé de 3,5 % pour s’établir à 3,4 milliards. « Nous avons posé des bases solides pour accélérer la croissance, grâce au déploiement de routes à fort potentiel, à l’exécution rigoureuse de notre programme [de réduction des coûts] et au refinancement de notre dette auprès du gouvernement [fédéral », a souligné la présidente et cheffe de la direction de l’entreprise québécoise, Annick Guérard, dans un communiqué.

The European Union will expand its carbon border levy - a fee charged on imports of high-emission goods - to cover car parts and washing machines, under European Commission proposals published on Wednesday. The plans would also tighten loopholes that the Commission worries could allow foreign firms to dodge the fee, which is currently in a pilot phase and will start imposing costs from January. The EU's Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism - the world's first carbon border tariff - will impose fees on the CO2 emissions of imported goods including steel, aluminium, cement and fertilisers. The policy, known as CBAM, is designed to shield European industries against cheaper imports from countries with weaker climate rules. But it has irritated trading partners including China, India and South Africa, which say it unfairly penalises their economies.

The federal government has approved a massive $50‑billion merger between global mining giants Anglo American and Canada’s Teck Resources Limited. It’s a deal many expect will inject billions into the Canadian economy, with much of it earmarked for British Columbia. Industry leaders say the move will cement Vancouver’s position as a global mining hub. “This merger will establish Vancouver as the headquarters of one of the world’s largest critical mineral producers, as well as one of the top five copper producers in the world,” said Michael Goehring, president of the Mining Association of BC. The newly formed Anglo Teck plans to invest $10 billion over the next 15 years in major operations, including the Highland Valley Copper Mine near Logan Lake and other critical mineral projects across the province.

Most compensation programs fail for one of two reasons: the design doesn’t match the strategy or the company fails to use the program to communicate and clarify priorities. Boards and compensation committees focus a lot on the first problem—metrics, targets, peer groups, mix—but rarely as much on the second. This article provides a framework for boards and compensation committees to understand the link between pay program design and communication strategy—and how to leverage that connection to strengthen both the effectiveness of compensation and the broader EVP. The key is deciding how prominent compensation should be in the company’s culture and narrative, then ensuring leadership has the tools to communicate that choice. When done well, this ensures that compensation programs serve their intended purpose and drive employee and executive motivation and focus.

A prominent New York investor has been approached by at least one major Warner Bros Discovery shareholder to acquire all or part of its cable television assets including CNN, said people briefed on the matter. Soo Kim, founder of New York hedge fund Standard General, has been in talks over potentially buying or investing in the WBD television networks, said the people. A veteran of distressed debt deals, Kim took stakes in troubled companies including RadioShack and American Apparel. Standard General has recently entered gaming through its takeover of the listed Bally’s casino chain and has done previous television network deals. A cash infusion could boost the prospects of WBD’s cable assets, which are being spun off as part of the $83bn sale of the group’s studio and streaming assets to Netflix. The shareholder who approached Kim could not be immediately identified. The potential transaction comes after WBD urged its shareholders on Wednesday to reject Paramount’s $108bn hostile offer to buy all of the media conglomerate.

ANZ Group said on Thursday its new CEO will forgo his short-term bonus this year after a significant minority of shareholders opposed the Australian lender's executive pay report at its 2025 annual general meeting. Shareholders voted 32.36% against the report, well above the 25% threshold required to block the resolution, according to proxy votes released on Thursday. ANZ Chairman Paul O'Sullivan said at the shareholder meet that CEO Nuno Matos has proposed to not receive his short-term variable remuneration this year, "even though contributing issues pre-dated his arrival." ANZ, Australia's No.4 bank, has now received a second "strike", or a "no" vote, on its remuneration report, after a first strike last year. The action could now trigger a call for a shareholder vote on whether to remove the entire board.

A coalition backed by Big Tech companies including Google and Meta has agreed to pay US$44.2 million for carbon credits from a Canadian company that aims to remove carbon dioxide from biowaste, the coalition’s head of deployment told Reuters. Frontier, launched in 2022 by Stripe, Google, Meta, Shopify and McKinsey, aims to help scale carbon removal technologies by committing to buy credits in advance, thereby derisking the projects and helping them grow more quickly. The group plans to spend $1 billion on credits between 2022 and 2030. Its latest deal covers 122,000 metric tons of CO2 to be locked away between 2026 and 2030 by NULIFE GreenTech, which converts agricultural and industrial waste - including grease from food processing - into bio-oil. The credits were purchased at an average weighted price of $362 per ton.

Activist investor Irenic Capital Management has built a stake of more than 3% in Integer Holdings and is urging the medical-device outsourcing company to refresh its board and consider a sale, according to people familiar with the matter. Now one of Integer’s biggest shareholders, Irenic delivered a letter privately to Integer’s board earlier this week detailing its requests, the people said. Irenic believes Integer shares trade at a discount in part because it doesn’t have any pure-play publicly traded peers and is therefore not well understood or covered by Wall Street analysts, the people said. It thinks Integer could be more attractive as a private company because it is unable to disclose customer or product-level information publicly—owing to confidentiality requirements—making it harder for investors to underwrite its pipeline, the people added.

The Canada Pension Plan Investment Board is forming a $1.1-billion joint venture to buy domestic industrial properties with Dream Industrial REIT and Dream Asset Management Corp., seeking to tap into pent-up demand for smaller facilities close to big cities. CPPIB will put up $1-billion of equity capital, with Dream Industrial adding $100-million, to buy “last mile” warehouses and distribution facilities located near major Canadian cities, which serve small businesses and consumers, playing a crucial role in e-commerce. The joint venture is launching by acquiring 12 Canadian industrial properties for $805-million from Dream Industrial that cover a total of 3.6 million square feet of space in Ontario, Quebec and Alberta.

Trump Media & Technology will merge with a fusion power company in an all-stock deal that the companies said Thursday is valued at more than US$6-billion. Devin Nunes, the Republican congressman who resigned in 2021 to become the CEO of Trump Media, will be co-CEO of the new company with TAE Technologies CEO Michl Binderbauer. Shares of Trump Media & Technology, the parent company of President Donald Trump’s Truth Social media platform, have tumbled 70 per cent this year but jumped 20 per cent before the opening bell Thursday. TAE is a private company, and the merger with Trump Media would create one of the first publicly traded nuclear fusion companies. “We’re taking a big step forward toward a revolutionary technology that will cement America’s global energy dominance for generations,” Nunes said in a prepared statement.

Bombardier a annoncé mercredi le remboursement anticipé de 500 millions US d’obligations hypothécaires de premier rang l’an prochain, avant leur échéance en 2028, dans le cadre de ses efforts pour réduire son endettement. Grâce à ce remboursement, qui devrait être finalisé d’ici le 17 février, la société aura réduit sa dette à long terme de 5,5 milliards US depuis décembre 2020, générant ainsi des économies annualisées sur les frais d’intérêts de plus de 409 millions US. Le vice-président exécutif et chef de la direction financière de Bombardier, Bart Demosky, affirme que l’approche proactive de l’entreprise en matière de liquidités et de gestion de la dette a été un élément clé de son redressement.Il ajoute que l’entreprise est en voie d’atteindre ses objectifs de désendettement à long terme. Bombardier vise un ratio dette nette ajustée/BAIIA ajusté compris entre 2 et 2,5.

Bain Capital Integral Investors II cède une partie de sa participation dans BRP, fabricant de motoneiges Ski-Doo établi à Valcourt, au Québec, dans le cadre d’une transaction qui verra RBC Marchés des capitaux réaliser un placement secondaire. Selon les termes de l’entente, RBC Marchés des capitaux s’est engagée à acquérir 1,85 million d’actions de BRP au prix de 100 $ l’action, légèrement inférieur au cours de clôture de mercredi, qui était de 104 $ l’action. Bain et ses sociétés affiliées détiendront environ 8,6 millions d’actions après la clôture de l’offre, ce qui représente près de 11,7 % du capital de BRP. Actuellement, Bain détient environ 10,4 millions d’actions, soit près de 14,2 % des actions émises et en circulation. La clôture de l’offre est prévue la semaine prochaine et est soumise aux conditions habituelles.

Medline will debut on the Nasdaq later on Wednesday after the U.S. medical supply giant raised $6.26 billion in the biggest global initial public offering of 2025, capping a strong year for new listings and fueling optimism for 2026. The company, acquired in 2021 by Blackstone, Carlyle and Hellman & Friedman in one of the largest private-equity deals, sold 216 million shares in an upsized offering at $29 apiece, compared with the marketed range of $26 and $30 per share. U.S. IPO activity has stayed resilient in 2025, shrugging off the impact of market volatility in April, fueled by President Donald Trump's sweeping tariffs, as well as the longest government shutdown. Before Medline's raise, Chinese battery maker CATL's $5.3 billion Hong Kong offering in May was the biggest IPO globally this year, according to data compiled by LSEG.
Liquefied natural gas producer Venture Global (VG.N), opens new tab, Swedish fintech Klarna, cloud-computing firm CoreWeave and stablecoin issuer Circle were among the largest U.S. IPOs of 2025.

Amazon.com Inc is in talks to invest in ChatGPT-maker OpenAI in a potential deal that could value the artificial intelligence firm at more than $500 billion, a source familiar with the matter said on Tuesday. Amazon may invest about $10 billion in OpenAI, but the talks between the two firms are "very fluid", the source said on condition of anonymity because the matter is private. The potential deal highlights the AI sector's relentless demand for computing power as companies race to build systems rivaling or surpassing human intelligence. Firms such as Nvidia and Oracle have signed AI deals worth several billion dollars with OpenAI this year. OpenAI also signed a $38-billion-deal to buy cloud services from Amazon in November. However, investors are on guard for signals that demand for AI is tailing off or that the massive spending is not paying off as anticipated. The discussion between Amazon and OpenAI come at a time when the AI giant is laying the groundwork for an initial public offering that could value the company at up to $1 trillion, Reuters reported in October.

European officials on Tuesday moved to ease their ban on sales of cars with internal combustion engines by 2035, responding to pressure from governments and automakers who argued that the industry needed more flexibility in finding ways to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and help achieve EU climate goals. The proposal from the EU’s executive commission would change provisions of 2023 legislation requiring average emissions in new cars to equal zero, or a 100 per cent reduction from 2021 levels. The new proposal would require a 90 per cent emissions reduction. That means in practical terms that most cars would be battery-only but would leave room for some cars with internal combustion engines. Automakers would have to compensate for the added emissions by using European steel produced by methods that emit less carbon, and through use of climate neutral e-fuels made from renewable electricity and captured carbon dioxide and biofuels made from plants.