Corporate Board articles from March 2007

Corporate Board archives from March 2007

Compelled privilege waiver: has the McNulty memo changed anything?(Paul McNulty )
March 1, 2007... In December, the U.S. Department of Justice offered a major change in its rules for compelling corporations to waive attorney-client privilege in order to be considered "cooperative" in federal criminal investigations. This new "McNulty...

Proxy battles ahead for 2007.
March 1, 2007... The 2006 proxy season was one of the most contentious in memory, but now appears to have been only an overture for the proxy battles coming this spring. "Majority vote" and "shareholder access" issues have become a corporate reality. Legal...

Preparing the new compensation discussion and analysis.
March 1, 2007... Major corporations will face new SEC proxy requirements this year. The Compensation Disclosure &Analysis will not only require your board to detail how much you pay executives, but why you pay them, and how you decided on those amounts. You may...

The Environmental Advisory Board.(Company overview)
March 1, 2007... Environmental concerns now hit major companies from every angle--regulatory, legal, public, investor and customer relations. Boards need to know what the issues are, and how they will affect strategy. Forming an Environmental Advisory Board can...

How women directors succeed.
March 1, 2007... Few governance topics are as hotly debated as improving the representation of women in corporate boardrooms. The author finds that this subject also suffers from misconceptions and misunderstandings that do not stand up to the statistics. For...

New "Tax Governance Institute" will encourage dialogue on corporate tax issues.(Audit)
March 1, 2007... KPMG LLP, the audit, tax and advisory firm, has established a Tax Governance Institute. It provides a forum for board members, management, stakeholders, and government representatives to explore and debate aspects of tax oversight and...

Nonqualified deferred compensation plans the most popular executive perk.(Compensation & Recruitment)
March 1, 2007... Amid ongoing public debate and regulatory scrutiny regarding how U.S. companies pay their executives, a new survey found that, while major corporations continue to offer a wide range of deferral programs to executives, nonqualified deferred...

Departures of top CEOs hit 15 percent worldwide.(Compensation & Recruitment)
March 1, 2007... When it comes to the "super class" of CEOs in the world's largest companies, upheaval in the chief executive suite is not the exclusive domain of one region, according to an analysis by public relations firm Weber Shandwick. Overall, a sizeable...

Corporate giving continues to increase.(Corporate Responsibility)
March 1, 2007... Total corporate contributions in the U.S. and abroad (among 211 corporations and foundations) amounted to $9.8 billion in 2005, The Conference Board reports in its annual survey of corporate giving to worthy causes. This represents 71 percent...

The SEC unveils new controls and disclosure proposals.(Disclosure)
March 1, 2007... At a December meeting, the Securities and Exchange Commission issued a number of significant new proposals and final rules on risk controls and disclosure. A summary of the SEC rules, prepared by the Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher law firm, is...

Employee hotlines reveal surprisingly serious issues.(Liability & Litigation)
March 1, 2007... The Network, Inc., a provider of ethics and compliance hotline programs, and the CSO Executive Council, a group for senior security executives, have published its 2006 Corporate Governance and Compliance Hotline Benchmarking Report. This is the...

More corporate use of outside legal counsel is predicted.(Liability & Litigation)
March 1, 2007... More than 25 percent of in-house law department leaders indicated that they would increase their use of outside counsel in 2007, according to the Association of Corporate Counsel's Chief Legal Officer Survey. This is a significant increase from...

OECD provides guidance for its corporate governance rules.(Shareholders & Investors)
March 1, 2007... The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has strengthened the role of its Principles of Corporate Governance as a global standard by issuing guidance for users in assessing their implementation. The Principles, agreed by...

U.S. institutional investors continue to boost ownership.(Shareholder Relations)
March 1, 2007... Institutional investors continue to boost significantly their equity ownership of U.S. markets as well as their ownership of the largest 1,000 U.S. corporations, The Conference Board reports in its Institutional Investment Report. Latest...

Ten years ago in The Corporate Board.(Retrospectives)
March 1, 2007... [Corporate] prosecution once hinged on the concept of intent, but this has often been replaced by evidence of "willful blindness," "recklessness," "failure to perceive (a risk)," or "collective knowledge" for corporate liability. --Paul...

Five years ago in The Corporate Board.(Retrospectives)
March 1, 2007... The primary beneficiaries of this phenomenon [black directors in the boardroom] were white corporate directors themselves. Having a black presence in the boardroom was, quite simply, an education for them. Many of those men had never in their...

Know-How.
March 1, 2007... Know-How. By Ram Charan. Crown Business. $27.50. Effective leadership is more than image and vision, says Ram Charan, one of America's most gifted business thinkers. Rather, it demands eight distinct skills needed to turn leadership insights...

The Carrot Principle.(Brief article)(Book review)
March 1, 2007... The Carrot Principle. Adrian Gostick and Chester Elton. Free Press. $21. Employee incentives and recognition are basic managerial tools, but the authors find that they are too often used poorly, especially at the top levels of a company....

Articles & speeches.(Spoken & Written)
March 1, 2007... The most overrated skill is skill. Luck is more important. The entrepreneur gets credit for being this genius, when really he was just at the right place at the right time. --Ken Hendricks, American Builders & Contractors Supply Co., Inc....

Recent board elections.(Directors' Register)
March 1, 2007... AK Steel Holding Corporation has elected to its board John S. Brinzo, chairman of Cleveland-Cliffs Inc. Alliance Resource Partners, L.P. has elected to its board Merribel S. Ayres, founder of Lighthouse Consulting Group, and Wilson M....

William George: in search of CEO and boardroom leadership.(Conversations)
March 1, 2007... William George has respected insight into executive and boardroom leadership that covers both the worlds of theory and practice. He served as CEO of health care technology firm Medtronic, Inc. from 1991 to 2001, and as chair from 1996 to 2002....