corporate governance Archives

Public companies should report on Diversity to their shareholders

There is enough evidence of the value of diversity on corporate boards now to do something truly visible about it. We deal with Say-on-Pay every year now at the public board level, so why not Report-on-Diversity?Say-on-Pay is a result of the Dodd-Frank Act. It says that the shareholders get to vote on whether they approve executive pay or not. It's non-binding - ie. "advisory" but boards take it very seriously. They have to. Executive pay is a contentious issue, highly paid consulting firms like ISS and Glass-Lewis opine on whether [...]

By Penny Herscher|2017-12-10T13:29:12-08:00December 12, 2012|Boards, Equality|0 Comments

NYSE Commission on Corporate Governance: Sense in the face of the nonsensical

As the financial markets blew up, and the wealth divide of the US opened up further, cries to change the way companies are run have grown louder and more capricious. Corporate governance has become the fig leaf a board can hide behind. Proxy advisory firms gain more Mob-like power , boards become driven by fear (consider the recent fear-based actions of the HP board) and fewer high quality execs want to serve on public boards (one of the reasons boards get so clubby - hang out with people you know [...]

By Penny Herscher|2017-12-06T17:13:34-08:00September 24, 2010|Boards|0 Comments

Activism is still on a roll

Six months ago I posted on how activism is on the rise - and now in early November one of the top stories of the year is the activist shareholder Jana’s successful play around CNET. This is written up in a terrific Bloomberg trend piece on activist investors – definitely worth reading if you are interested in how activists operate. In one case they describe how a specific focus on vulnerabilities of the by-laws and other corporate governance issues can create openings and weakness they can take advantage of. The [...]

By Penny Herscher|2017-12-03T02:44:48-08:00November 3, 2008|Leadership|0 Comments