Corporate Board articles from March 2000

Corporate Board archives from March 2000

The Myth Of The Independent Director.
March 1, 2000... From the SEC to stock exchanges, investor activists, and international business groups, the belief that wholly "independent" board members are best has become a governance universal. Yet Robert Hodes, an observer with an extensive board...

Implementing The New Audit Rules.
March 1, 2000... The SEC announced its final rules to upgrade the performance of audit committees on December 15, 1999--and now it is up to corporate boards to put the rules to work. How will this new audit regime force changes in your committee? And how can...

Board Composition And Globalization.
March 1, 2000... Global boardroom trends are much in the news as we start a new century. However, when it comes to governance, there is less to globalization than meets the eye. Richard Mahoney, former chairman and CEO of Monsanto, finds that international...

Convergence In Global Governance?
March 1, 2000... Overseas companies face growing pressure to improve their disclosure and governance policies--with the U.S. corporate system often presented as the model. Conventional wisdom holds that the result of this market mixture will be a convergence in...

Understanding Change-In-Control Payments.
March 1, 2000... Combine a hot merger and acquisition environment with an even hotter job market, and the smart use of "golden parachute" packages for top executives becomes a major board concern. Executive talent wants to know that they are covered after...

Audit committees should focus on key business risks.(Brief Article)
March 1, 2000... Two-thirds of the respondents to a national poll of financial executives felt that the audit committees of corporate boards were either "proactive" or "very proactive" in challenging management assumptions and asking tough questions. However,...

Dot-com boards are less independent.(Brief Article)
March 1, 2000... Internet companies have boards of directors that are less independent and board committee structures that fall short of traditional good governance practices, according to a study by the Investor Responsibility Research Center (IRRC). ...

America's largest companies are much more likely to have women directors.(Brief Article)
March 1, 2000... America's 500 largest companies are significantly more likely to have at least one woman board director than the next largest group, according to the 1999 Catalyst Census of Women Board Directors of the Fortune 1000. Eighty-four percent of...

Stock options were the engine of executive pay growth in 1999.(Brief Article)
March 1, 2000... Stock options are driving pay packages to record levels for CEO, CFO, chief legal and top human resource positions at multi-billion dollar U.S. companies, according to a review of 1999 pay by executive compensation consultants Pearl Meyer &...

Seven ways to safely outsource in a global marketplace.(Brief Article)
March 1, 2000... The 1999 World Trade Organization (WTO) conference in Seattle brought attention to labor and human rights violations all over the world. Trade agreements and organizations designed to set the global standards do not seem to be working in our...

Employers are adding benefits to meet boomers' retirement needs.(Brief Article)
March 1, 2000... With the oldest Baby Boomers settling into their 50s in 2000, employers nationwide are taking a closer look at retirement benefits. A nationwide survey of human resources professionals reveals that U.S. employers are enhancing retirement plans...

Report says gains from trade liberalization outweigh costs.(Brief Article)
March 1, 2000... The Manufacturers Alliance/MAPI has released a report that says trade liberalization "promotes greater individual choice, opportunity, and freedom." The report concludes that by unleashing competitive forces, international trade and investment...

Ten years ago in The Corporate Board.(Brief Article)
March 1, 2000... The good news is that there is a lot more of this positive restructuring going on among U.S. businesses today than is usually acknowledged. To be sure, lots more remains to be done, but far-sighted managements and their boards have already...

Five years ago in The Corporate Board.(Brief Article)
March 1, 2000... You could say that the big insight for the next ten years is this: What if digital communications were free? The answer is that the way we learn, buy, socialize, do business, and entertain ourselves will be very different, and that we hope...

Wisdom of the CEO.(Review)
March 1, 2000... By G. William Dauphinais, Grady Means, and Colin Price. John Wiley & Sons. $27.95. The authors round up first-person stories from 29 of the world's most noted chief executives (including Jacques Nasser of Ford, Michael Dell of Dell Computer,...

Corporate Combat.(Brief Article)(Review)
March 1, 2000... By Nick Skellon. Nicholas Brealey Publishing. $25. The business-as-warfare model may seem to be tapped out, but the author does a good job of examining successful contemporary marketing tactics and comparing them with great battles from...

Spoken & Written.
March 1, 2000... When you bring your company to the Web, you expose all the inefficiency that comes from decentralized organizations. Now, when a customer comes to you on the Web, they're expecting to be able to move across those departments. They're expecting...

Conversations: Pat McGurn: The Busy Proxy Season 2000.(Brief Article)(Interview)
March 1, 2000... The first proxy season of the new century is bringing together many new proxy tools and concerns that have been building over the past few years. * Major investors and activists have become more sophisticated in using proxy tools to target...