Governance

FiscalDoctor CEO and President Gary Patterson discusses takeaways from the latest NACD Public Company Governance Survey – guidance pertinent for small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs) and large organizations alike. Small and medium-sized businesses (SMB) must often live with the reality of scarce resources: limited time, insufficient money for open CAPEX needs and inadequate access to key expertise. Here, I address...

Directors are more focused on non-shareholder needs than the public and media believe. This is according to the just-released report from Diligent Institute and Stanford University's Rock Center for Corporate Governance. The report paints a nuanced picture of how board directors are managing shareholder and stakeholder interests and where improvements can be made. Some key findings and topics include: Commitment...

Ola Tucker, founder of Compliance Notes, discusses the board of director’s oversight role with respect to a financial institution’s BSA/AML compliance program, as well as the specific responsibilities arising out of that role. Anti-money laundering compliance has been a main focus of regulators and prosecutors in recent years. This is evidenced by the increase in criminal and regulatory penalties imposed...

Women are still largely under-represented on corporate boards globally, and progress to change this trend continues to be slow. Deloitte's 6th edition of the "Women in the Boardroom" report outlines efforts and progress made in over 60 countries to increase the number of women occupying board seats. The report also features perspectives of three non-executive directors from Australia, Spain and...

Talent is every organization’s lifeblood. Jim DeLoach discusses how, coupled with demographic and social trends, the technologies of the digital age are transforming the workplace. Executives and directors need to pay attention as electronic workers (machines and algorithms) become more prominent in their companies. In last month’s article, I discussed how shifts in workplace dynamics are forcing companies to transition...

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...