All Boards & Shareholders articles – Page 18
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Blog
Under investor scrutiny, corporate governance evolved into a crucial value generator
Title: Recent statements from big, maRecent statements from big, mainstream investment firms underscore just how far corporate governance has evolved from having once been a compliance exercise about proxies to a fundamental contributor to risk management and value creation. And as more funds integrate environmental, social, and governance factors into ...
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Article
Buffett vs. Zuckerberg: Does CEO age matter to investors?
Plenty of research supports the notion of mandatory retirement age for board members, but what about MRPs for CEOs? Does imposing an age limit on top executives really drive better long-term organizational performance? Shareholders, it turns out, seem to prefer experience to youth.
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Article
GE unveils new approach to investor reporting
GE might seem an unlikely company to take a lead in the push to simplify financial disclosures. A multinational conglomerate with a long list of business lines, its inherent complexity might seem to make it ill-suited for such a task. And yet, GE is aggressively taking the lead, notably with ...
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Article
Pax World’s Joe Keefe on how ESG continues to go mainstream
Image: The 2016 proxy season, building upon trends that emerged from last year’s annual meetings, may prove to be pivotal for investors focused on sustainability, diversity, and environmental issues. “I’ve seen more uptake in the last 18 months than I’ve seen in the previous 17 years,” says Joe Keefe, president ...
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Blog
BDO USA weighs in with proxy season advice
Volatility and risk around the globe is fostering uncertainty in corporate boardrooms around the country, and the “unsettled climate should make for an interesting annual meeting season,” says a new report by BDO USA, an accounting and consulting firm. The firm has compiled a list of topics that corporate management ...
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Article
Proxy season debates may include board scrutiny and short-termism
With proxy season just around the corner, the annual tradition of assessing the mood of investors has begun. On tap, experts say, are demands for improved transparency and communication, better disclosures, and a continuing scrutiny of directors, including how (and how much) they and their C-suite cohorts are compensated. “We ...
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Article
Women on U.K. boards: A (partial) success story
Corporate boards across the United Kingdom continue to have low numbers of women on them, suggesting that the struggle to increase board diversity is going slower than planned. But progress is indeed being made, all while raising the difficult questions as to why it is not so easy to build ...
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Blog
The state of “Emperor’s New Clothes” corporate disclosure
Capital markets move on information. And business in general improves in a competitive world when oversight is grounded in meaningful data. That’s why transparency in disclosure is such a good thing. But what we have now is bland compliance, not insightful communication, and it’s pretending that something exists when it’s ...
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ArticleNASDAQ rule could tug on the ‘golden leash’ of activist directors
So-called “golden leash” arrangements occur when activist shareholders—typically hedge funds—pay a director or board nominee in connection with their service. Calling them “one area where investors may not have complete information,” NASDAQ submitted a rule proposal to the SEC that would require listed companies to disclose these arrangements. A more ...
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Blog
Survey: public underestimates CEO pay, still outraged
Image: A recent survey of 1,202 individuals by Stanford University’s Rock Center for Corporate Governance shows the American public believes CEOs take home much more in compensation than they deserve. “While we find that members of the public are not particularly knowledgeable about how much CEOs actually make in annual ...
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Blog
PwC and LRN Forge Strategic Relationship to Elevate Corporate Values
PwC and LRN have announced a long-term strategic relationship to better help organizations elevate behavior, define and scale their values. Together, the PwC network of firms and LRN will develop innovative solutions in governance, culture and leadership, and in areas such as strategy, talent, forensic investigations, enterprise risk management, and ...
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Blog
ISS Updates Guidance on Executive Compensation Policies
Leading proxy adviser ISS has updated guidance, in the form of “frequently asked questions,” regarding its approach to executive compensation policies. The document is intended as a general discussion about the way ISS will analyze certain issues in the context of preparing proxy analyses and determining vote recommendations for U.S. ...
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Blog
Pale, Male, and Stale
The call for greater boardroom diversity is not merely a matter of political correctness; it’s a matter of modern business planning, and most of all, a matter of regulatory compliance. And yet, despite the strides being made here, there is still much more ground to cover, and progress seems to ...
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Blog
Missing Links in Regulators’ View of Compliance Programs
We recently heard from Assistant Attorney General Leslie Caldwell about what she and her staff considers what is—or is not—an effective compliance program. Most notably, she noted that many companies have what appear to be good structures on paper but fail in practice to devote adequate resources and management attention—with ...
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Blog
Board of Directors and Line of Sight Into Compliance Trends
Image: A board of directors must set the appropriate tone at the top for any organization. Yet it must do more than simply set the tone, sit back, and do nothing. A board needs to take a hard look at the information it is being presented and tell management to ...
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Blog
PayPal Appoints New Board Member
PayPal Holdings has appointed Wences Casares to its board of directors, effective of as of Jan. 12. He will serve on PayPal’s compensation committee.
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Blog
NYC Comptroller Expands Proxy Access Demands
On behalf of New York City’s public pension funds, Comptroller Scott Stringer has announced the expansion of an initiative that uses shareholder resolutions to pressure companies to adopt meaningful proxy access bylaws. In 2016, 72 companies will be asked to enact a 3 percent ownership threshold for the ability to ...
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Blog
Remember When David Bowie Went Wall Street on Us?
Image: In 1997, just before the music industry was about to be turned upside down by a Black Swan-level of remarkable circumstances, legendary rock artist David Bowie issued bonds on his future royalties, earning a handsome payday for himself, and managing to sidestep a financial cataclysm in the making. Was ...
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Blog
Why All the Fuss Over Culture?
We hear a great deal about corporate culture and its relevance to such matters as internal control, risk management, whether to pursue a merger or acquisition, and the effect on regulators’ investigations and enforcement actions. It seems we can’t get away from hearing about it, and we begin to wonder ...
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Article
SEC Pushed Toward Creating New Board Composition Disclosures
Image: As businesses become more risk-prone and globalized, investors are demanding that fresh blood be infused into boards. So too are legislators with a desire to leverage SEC disclosures as a tool to bolster the ranks of directors and embed cyber-security knowledge. These efforts place a focus on board composition, ...