Corporate Board articles from January 2009

Corporate Board archives from January 2009

Oversight of strategic risk: a board challenge.
January 1, 2009... Some of America's biggest financial firms have been badly shaken, or driven out of business over the past several months. These failures trace back to poorly judged and monitored risk on the part of top executives and the board. Yet how can...

Reshaping your board for hard times.(Company overview)(Survey)
January 1, 2009... The economic stresses of the past few months suggest a prolonged downturn in the world economy--and will demand boards and directors able to cope with this harsher climate. Boards have reshaped their membership and procedures over the past...

Compensation committees in troubled times.
January 1, 2009... Economic turmoil has brought a tipping point to public and government concern about executive pay. Incentives and severance that pay out despite company failure may prompt new legislation. However, board compensation committees must also face...

Financial governance now.
January 1, 2009... Trying to manage through the economic chaos of the past few months has been compared to trying to catch a falling knife. Yet that is just the fiduciary task that a corporate board is expected to do. How will you need to rethink strategy in...

Self-assessment: making good boards better.
January 1, 2009... The Sarbanes-Oxley law and its resulting stock exchange reform rules have driven boards to make self-assessment a part of their agenda. Yet spectacular failures at some of America's biggest financial firms (who presumably had some of our best...

Board membership profiles have changed sharply over the past decade.(Boardroom Composition)
January 1, 2009... The 23rd annual Spencer Stuart Board Index (SSBI) study of S&P 500 corporations reveals that in the last 10 years board composition and structure have changed significantly, as have discussions in the boardroom. On average, boards are...

Boards are adopting more "good governance" practices.(Boardroom Practice)
January 1, 2009... U.S. public companies are becoming increasingly more responsive to good corporate governance practices and to the interests of their shareholders, as exemplified by the rise of majority voting, the decline of both classified boards and poison...

Ten years ago in The Corporate Board.(Retrospectives)
January 1, 2009... Few chief executives are able to succeed long term with boards loaded with their own company executives, suppliers and personal friends. In contrast, many new CEOs' corporate governance policies include performance evaluations with incentive...

Five years ago in The Corporate Board.(Retrospectives)
January 1, 2009... The best reason for public companies to reassess their governance processes and effectiveness is the fact that it is in their own self-interest to do so. There are critical private-sector sources imposing meaningful pressures on public...

Books received.(Bibliography)
January 1, 2009... Corporate Governance: Promises Kept, Promises Broken. By Jonathan R. Macey. Princeton University Press. $35. Although academic in tone, Macey's latest book offers well-sourced examinations of how governance reforms of the past decade have often...

Recent Board Elections.(Directors' Register)
January 1, 2009... Allegheny Technologies Incorporated has elected to its board Barbara S. Jeremiah, executive vice president and chairman's counsel of Alcoa Inc. American International Group, Inc. has elected to its board Dennis D. Dammerman, chairman of...