Harvey L. Pitt

In the broad arena of compliance, no area is fraught with more potential difficulties than asset management. It’s axiomatic that any time one group of individuals entrusts property or liquid assets to another, the potential for recriminations runs high. This is especially true with respect to retirement funds, since nothing is more likely to provoke […]

In Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Antonio prompts his friend Sebastian to action by telling him, “What’s past is prologue.” By this, he meant that the events of the past set the scene for what’s to come, and what’s to come is within our control to influence and even determine. The same advice is applicable to corporations […]

Over the past 18 months, I’ve written periodically in this Compliance Week column about how directors should direct. For the most part, those columns were written for directors and their advisors. But building effective relationships between management and directors is a two-way street. Smart corporate officers will assume the responsibility for assuring a relationship with […]

Socrates taught that “the unexamined life is not worth living.” Although a penniless philosopher who lived centuries ago, his advice has useful application in the 21st century corporate boardroom. Why is the unexamined boardroom life not worth living? For the same reasons Socrates advanced at his trial—it’s our responsibility to be independent, critical thinkers, and […]

In the final analysis, it’s really up to the business community, not government, to restore investor confidence. After all, the problems we’ve seen emanated from the private sector, and should be solved there. More importantly, companies that wait for the government to tell them what they can or can’t do, have only themselves to blame […]

Over the past several years, the liability landscape for corporate directors has been changing dramatically. This process has been exacerbated by the seemingly endless string of corporate scandals, involving the implosion of some of our largest companies. Most recently, three events are causing greater focus by directors on the thorny issue of personal liability, and […]

This is the second in an occasional series of “how to” columns on directing, which considers how independent directors can be proactive, but in a constructive way. The guidance is intended to assist directors in striking the correct balance between two unacceptable extremes—being unduly compliant toward management, or unduly adversarial. Being independent doesn’t mean you […]

Being an effective director is a learned, not innate, skill. Nor is it a static proposition. Standards for directors change over time, especially as we consider more about what directors should do, and as we learn what happens when there are important things they don’t do. To ensure and improve their effectiveness, directors must continually […]