A critical component in developing comprehensive client insights in your proposals is knowing how a client’s executives are compensated. Yet in my experience, most strategic account managers and sellers do not use executive compensation in their sales process...
Could board directors and executives have anticipated the pandemic? Yes, responded Louise Pentland, an executive at PayPal, the payments company, and a non-executive director of Japan’s Hitachi, during a recent webinar...
The first quarter of 2020 marked the end of an 11-year bull market and was characterized by volatility. While the entire market has been rocked by the pandemic, it appears that sustainable funds based on environmental, social and governance — or ESG — ratings proved relatively stable over the first quarter of 2020...
The focus on human capital and talent in corporate governance is intensifying, as more stakeholders—led by large institutional investors—seek to understand how companies are integrating human capital considerations into the overarching strategy to create long-term value. After all, a company’s intangible assets, which include human capital and culture, are now estimated to comprise a significant portion of a company’s market value...
Amid all the horrors of 2020, ESG ETFs have so far suffered only two weeks of outflows, both of minimal amounts. Meanwhile, when it comes to investment performance ESG has also had a good crisis...
This Governing Health series examines how traditional governance practices may change and how boards of directors can position themselves to proactively support their organizations now and as they recover from the COVID-19 shutdown...
It is not unusual for a CEO to comment on the company’s current stock price. It is, however, unusual for a CEO to do so on Twitter in a series of tweets...
As directors of every company grapple with the effects of COVID-19 on their organizations, it is inevitable that corporate governance in general and boardrooms specifically will be forever changed, in ways both big and small...
Strategy and Governance Audit committees have a critical role to play for companies in a business environment that has been severely disrupted by the coronavirus pandemic. In addition to their fiduciary responsibilities for overseeing the external auditor and financial statements, audit committees can contribute valuable oversight duties in areas such as risk management, cybersecurity, and operations and culture...
C-suites and boardrooms are going to look quite different as company leaders try to prioritize safety without sacrificing involvement as they resume some semblance of normal operations...
Though former China Communist Party leader Mao Zedong famously said, "Women hold up half of the sky," gender imbalances persist in board memberships...
It is well-settled that the assets of non-qualified deferred compensation programs are subject to the claims of the company’s general creditors. Securing the assets with a Rabbi Trust does nothing to change that answer...
By putting environmental, social, and governance (ESG) at the heart of the world’s largest pension fund’s investments, Hiromichi Mizuno (known as Hiro) not only rocked the world of traditional pension finance but also had a profound impact on the cause of socially responsible investing...
This will require a new governance form that makes a company's obligations to fulfill its purpose enforceable. For such a governance form to be ...
The coronavirus pandemic is negatively impacting business across the board—already struggling businesses are being pushed into insolvency and previously healthy companies are experiencing a new time of financial distress...
Despite scandals and crises, executive compensation has remained too generous, too opaque and too loosely linked to long-term goals...
“Blocking rights”— corporate governance provisions designed to prevent management from putting a company in a Chapter 11 case without certain ...
Over the past few months, some of the world’s biggest companies’ CEOs have reasserted themselves in ways they haven’t in the past. Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg has “jumped into action steering Facebook ( FB ) into a high-profile campaign,” the Wall Street Journal recently wrote after consolidating power on Facebook’s board last December. Bob Iger, the longtime CEO of Disney ( DIS ), retired from top management in February, postponing something that he had planned to do for many years...
Who could possibly blame SoftBank for walking away last month from its $3 billion tender offer for WeWork shares— part of a $9.5 billion bailout package it signed last October? SoftBank Group ( SFTBY ) is the Tokyo-based, publicly traded conglomerate founded by entrepreneur and investor Masayoshi Son in 1981. Son, who still runs the company, made his name and fortune with early bets on Yahoo in 1995; Chinese e-commerce behemoth Alibaba Group ( BABA ) in 1999; and Japanese telecom companies...
In the pre-coronavirus world, Kimberley Lewis spent much of her working life trying to lift executives’ sights from day-to-day pressures to the ways they could become better, more responsible corporate citizens...
Corporate governance, B.C. (Before Coronavirus): A rock concert-sized crowd of shareholders packs into an arena in Omaha every year to hear from Warren Buffett (and buy discount Hanes underwear and other Berkshire Hathaway products). Corporate governance, A.D. (After Disruption): Businesses sit empty, the economy contracts, and companies must adjust the way their organizations operate, often on the fly...
According to the study, called “The Influence of Female Directors on Product Recall Decisions,” highly-defective medical products and treatments are recalled 28 days faster – 35% faster – when more than one woman is on the board of directors, compared to all-male boards...
