Corporate Board articles from March 2003

Corporate Board archives from March 2003

The overlooked governance reforms.
March 1, 2003... The past year has seen a flood of new laws, rules and suggestions for rebuilding public trust in corporate governance. While these changes are valuable, says boardroom veteran Clifton Wharton, we may be overlooking other reforms in...

Audit committees: the new board "fall guy"?
March 1, 2003... The focus of board reforms under both the Sarbanes-Oxley law and stock exchange rules has been the audit committee. By giving audit new duties and liabilities for corporate misconduct, are we helping them succeed--or setting them up to fail?...

The hunt for new board talent.
March 1, 2003... The wave of new governance reforms will bring a major shakeup in board composition. Who stays on your board, who is retired, who is selected, how they are recruited--and whether or not they say yes--will now be very different from what they...

Board service as a "profession".
March 1, 2003... The board has always been something of a part-time "amateur" body in trying to deal with full-time management. The new corporate reform laws, however, could put directors on the road to becoming "professionals" in the literal sense of the word....

Best practices for online governance disclosure.
March 1, 2003... As the Internet has grown to become the information medium of choice for business, demands for better corporate disclosure are making good corporate Web sites a must-have element of investor relations. Your company's corporate governance has...

Accounting errors are cause of most financial restatements. (Audit).
March 1, 2003... Huron Consulting Group has analyzed the leading causes of financial restatements filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in 2002. The study is broken down by company size and industries and it addresses the major events...

The Conference Board calls for splitting the roles of chairman and CEO. (Boardroom Composition).
March 1, 2003... The Conference Board's Blue Ribbon Commission on Public Trust and Private Enterprise in January recommended a wide range of actions to improve corporate governance, auditing and accounting practices. The commission, noting that no single...

U.S. and U.K. views on governance and social responsibility differ widely. (Corporate Responsibility).(Brief Article)
March 1, 2003... According to a survey by British American Business Inc., Americans still rate the bottom line higher than a sense of "doing good" on corporate social responsibility. The survey logged over 300 responses, evenly distributed between UK and U.S....

Fresh strategies are needed for the new SEC reporting requirements. (Disclosure).
March 1, 2003... The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 has established a new requirement that CEOs and CFOs explicitly evaluate and report to the public on the effectiveness of internal controls over financial reporting. To assist companies' compliance,...

Pension plan funded ratios dropped again in 2002. (Pensions & Benefits).
March 1, 2003... Capital market results for 2002 contributed to a significant drop in pension plan funded ratios, continuing a three-year pattern of decline. The combined effects of diminishing assets and liability increases reduced typical plan funded levels...

Investors' faith in corporate America's ethics is dismally low. (Shareholder Relations).
March 1, 2003... Individual investors' trust in the ethics of corporate America remains dismally low, according to the Investor Confidence Index conducted by Rating Research LLC. Only one in twenty (five percent) investors claim they are "very confident"...

Books received.(Book Review)
March 1, 2003... Corporate Governance Regimes: Convergence And Diversity. Edited by Joseph A. McCahery, Piet Moerland, Theo Raaijmakers and Luc Renneboog. Oxford University Press. $150. Definitely not light reading at almost 700 pages, this tome offers a broad...

Ten years ago. (Retrospectives).
March 1, 2003... Installing a separate chairman to create ongoing, strong, independent board leadership represents a distinct departure from tradition. Separate chairmen have most often been used only on a temporary, transitional basis. -- Leslie Levy,...

Five years ago. (Retrospectives).
March 1, 2003... One could hardly say that institutional investor activism is a bad thing, but the best reading of current evidence is that activism does not importantly affect firm performance. It cannot substitute for the discipline provided by an active...

Carol Bowie: Proxy season 2003. (Conversations).(Interview)
March 1, 2003... Although 2002 will be remembered as the Year of the Corporate Scandals, the events at Enron, Tyco etc., not to mention subsequent corrective legislation, came too late to have much effect on that year's shareholder proxy proposals. For 2003,...