Governance

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...

The job of CEO has become so complex that boards can no longer play a passive role as a collection of the CEO’s best friends, rubber-stamping management’s decisions. A new Deloitte CEO-Board study released today suggests that many of these leaders are looking to their boards for help, validation for their changing business models and vision for the future. The...

Henry Wolfe considers why, although CEO selection is one of the most important responsibilities of a public company board, boards are underperforming on this point (and many others) due to the suboptimal governance model. On May 24, the New York Times published an article titled “It’s Never Been Easier to Be a CEO, and the Pay Keeps Rising.” The section...

In this fourth installment on D&O liability from Fox Rothschild’s Stephanie Resnick and John Fuller, the authors explore the importance of having a diverse board to address the challenges posed by various social issues. with co-author John Fuller Why Is Diversity Important? As with the social issues discussed in prior articles, diversity is quickly evolving from an aspiration for equality to...

More than half of all shareholder proxy proposal exclusions allowed by the SEC are based on Rules 14a-8(i)(7) and 14a-8(i)(10), according to research and analysis in our new whitepaper. In this whitepaper, Intelligize’s Rob Peters and Alyson Clabaugh leverage public company filings and SEC correspondence available in Intelligize’s No-Action Letters database to examine and visualize discernible and instructive trends over the last...

Inclusion must be a strategic priority. Experts at Deloitte discuss how to immediately begin to cultivate an inclusive culture in the organization.