Governance

PwC’s Annual Corporate Directors Survey, set to release on October 8th, reveals a conundrum of collegiality in an increasingly distrustful environment. In a survey of more than 800 U.S. board directors, 43 percent revealed they have difficulty voicing a dissenting view in the boardroom. With corporate boards being tasked with ensuring the company is on the right track, this concern...

The SEC has squarely placed the onus on corporate board members to take on greater cybersecurity oversight of the companies they serve. NIC Inc.’s Jayne Friedland Holland discusses board members’ roles now. Following the heels of record-breaking cyber breaches in 2017, sensitive information found its way into cybercriminals’ hands in dozens of major attacks in 2018. Identity theft protection company...

While she was in Maryland recently for a conference, CCI caught up with Amii Barnard-Bahn, recently described by Forbes magazine as “one of the top coaches for legal and compliance executives.” Barnard-Bahn, a Fellow at the Harvard Institute of Coaching and a columnist for Compliance Week, was influential in steering the passage of California’s recent Bill SB826, the first law...

The traditional decades-old labor model has been under pressure for some time, and it’s already being supplanted within a growing number of companies. Protiviti’s Jim Deloach discusses why directors should understand these developments and their impact on the competitive talent landscape and labor market.  The so-called “war for talent” has been waged and chronicled for so long that reference to...

Concern for environmental and social issues has reached an inflection point. While traditional governance issues that have been a staple of investor advocacy and discussion (the “G” of ESG) continue to be important, environmental and social issues (the “E” and the “S” of “ESG”) have now taken center stage. Scarcely a day passes without a new ESG development, disseminated as...

The boards of the companies in the S&P 500 now all have female representation, a significant step. BDO’s Amy Rojik discusses board diversity trends and the implications of this milestone. The push toward gender parity in the boardroom reached a new milestone this summer. In the final days of July, Copart, an online auction-house for automobiles, announced that it would...

What are the standards for corporate sustainability? Fox Rothschild’s Maureen Mitchell offers insight into the most commonly used standards and how companies should go about setting goals. Companies are increasingly viewing sustainability as a necessity in achieving their business objectives. According to the Governance & Accountability Institute, in 2011, just under 20 percent of S&P 500 companies reported on their...

The power of ESG is only beginning to be unlocked; ESG risk equates to financial risk, and institutional investors are increasingly focused on the implementation and reporting of ESG initiatives. DFIN’s John Truzzolino tells us where to begin. Every company is on its own unique sustainability and social responsibility journey, from major corporations pushing for waste reduction in supply chains...

A majority of organizations are still struggling to comply with GDPR, and – just as bad – only 14 percent of U.S.-based companies are ready to comply with the CCPA. Waterline Data’s Alex Gorelik outlines what organizations can do to bake compliance into every aspect of company culture. One month after GDPR went into effect in May of 2018, California...

MetricStream’s Gaurav Kapoor shares insights and trends he’s gleaned from connecting with leading CXOs this summer. Here are some of the common threads these influential minds in IT GRC and audit discussed. This June, over 450 business executives, board directors, GRC practitioners, government leaders, industry analysts and more gathered to discuss the biggest risks and opportunities facing organizations today, as...

Companies often push aside investment in social factors in favor of profit, but environmental, social and governance (ESG) initiatives have been shown to intrinsically promote sustainable earnings and facilitate long-term success. Tucker Ellis’ Tod Northman and Savannah Fox discuss. Recently, the Rock Center for Corporate Governance at Stanford University and ValueAct Capital teamed up on a case study, The Business...

Henry D. Wolfe discusses the characteristics organizations should be looking for in its board members, from an internal drive to the courage to make waves and a commitment to holding management accountable. Every day, it seems, there is a host of new proposals and ideas for who should be appointed to public company boards and how. But there’s an important...