PWC on Corporate Boards: Cyber Threats, #Metoo, Diversity, and What Shareholders Want PWC’s annual director survey is one of our most trusted resources on corporate governance from the perspective of the boardroom, and this year’s edition has some significant findings on issues like diversity, CEO pay, climate change, cybersecurity, and the gap between what board members…
Column: This is what happens when you take Ayn Rand seriously | PBS NewsHour
Denise Cummins writes about what happened when Sears was run according to the principles of Ayn Rand. SPOILER ALERT: Chaos, followed by bankruptcy. Think Lord of the Flies in the executive suite. In 2008, Sears CEO Eddie Lampert decided to restructure the company according to Rand’s principles. Lampert broke the company into more than 30…
Finally, Evidence That Diversity Improves Financial Performance
This is an exceptionally thoughtful and important study about the financial benefits of diversity. When managers and scholars talk about diversity’s impact on organizations and teams, they’re usually referring to the effects on collective accuracy and objectivity, analytical thinking, and innovativeness. On “harder” measures of financial performance, researchers have struggled to establish a causal relationship…
Telstra considers executive pay overhaul after investors’ first strike against board | Australia news | The Guardian
We are very intrigued by the provision that a two-times vote against CEO pay has meaningful consequences in Australia. And needless to say, not impressed with the “everyone does it” excuse. Telstra is considering an overhaul of how it calculates executive bonuses after suffering a first strike from shareholders opposed to its remuneration report.More than…
GE Whiz: If Only Flannery’s Ouster Was Unique
No one knows more about CEO succession — the good, the bad, and the very ugly — than Yale’s Jeffrey Sonnenfeld. He has some thoughtful comments on the second CEO within a year at GE. He insists it is not unheard of and makes the key point that there was a major turnover on the…
The CEO Pay Ratio: Data and Perspectives from the 2018 Proxy Season
Compensation consultants from Pearl Meyer look at the results of the first pay ratio disclosures. Source: The CEO Pay Ratio: Data and Perspectives from the 2018 Proxy Season
Unilever U-turn shows how angry shareholders are securing change | Financial Times
It took just a few days after Unilever made public its proposal to move its headquarters to the Netherlands for the company to be faced with its first obstacle.Iain Richards, head of responsible investment at Columbia Threadneedle and one of the consumer goods company’s biggest shareholders, lambasted Unilever in a rare public statement in March,…
Morgan Stanley: The Business Case for Sustainable Investing
While the adoption of sustainable investing strategies are growing, there remains concern among many investors that incorporating environmental social and governance (ESG) criteria into your portfolio means accepting a lower rate of return.To move past that notion, it’s important to understand that the definition of sustainable investing has nothing to do with philanthropy, nor is…
The (expensive) lesson GE never learns – The Washington Post
How about a #MeToo movement for executive compensation?No joke. Corporate America has abused shareholders for too long. They have made a mockery of fairness, taste and responsible capitalism.They have no more idea of proper incentives than Harvey Weinstein had of employee relations.Their unceasing grabbing of tens of millions of other people’s (their shareholders’) money bespeaks…
Clean up climate change? It’s just good for business. – The Washington Post
If the world’s largest companies live up to the promises they’ve made to slow climate change, together they could reduce emissions by an amount equal to those of Germany. The corporate pledges gained new attention this week after an ominous report was issued by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which said that government policies…
