The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and Prudential Relegation Authority (PRA) have fined the chief executive of Barclays £642,430 over his handling of a whistle blower. In a joint statement the two regulators announced the Barclays chief James Staley will be fined for his failure to ‘act with due skill, care and diligence in the way he…
Tag: CEO
The Lonely CEO | Directors and Boards
The significant conclusion we would draw is somewhat different: CEOs do not allow or enable boards to play a significant substantive role beyond compliance and window dressing, and boards make no effort to change that. Whether it’s racial tensions in a coffee shop or testimony before Congress about privacy, CEOs face a lot of pressure…
Time For Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg To Face Facts
Professor Jeffrey Sonnenfeld explains the failure of corporate governance at Facebook revealed by the Cambridge Analytica breach. We concur, and we call on the board to establish a committee to investigate further and report to Facebook users and investors about the steps they are taking to prevent further breaches. The leadership of Facebook is failing…
Misconduct Report Shaves $2 Billion From Wynn Market Value – MoneyBeat – WSJ
How should a board react to this? How can a board prevent it? The market value of dropped by $2.1 billion on Friday, beginning a slide shortly after The Wall Street Journal published an article citing a pattern of sexual misconduct by the company’s chairman and chief executive. Source: Misconduct Report Shaves $2 Billion From…
Gretchen Morgenson: 20 Years of Corporate Governance
In her last column for the New York Times, Gretchen Morgenson summarizes the best and worst and most improved of the corporate governance issues she has reported on, quoting VEA Vice Chair Nell Minow: Nell Minow is a corporate governance expert and vice chairwoman at ValueEdge Advisors, a firm that guides institutional shareholders on reducing…
FT: Investors pass the buck on governance VEA: No They Don’t
Rana Foroohar’s column on institutional investors and corporate governance is internally inconsistent and factually wrong. She says that institutional investors “outsource” their proxy votes to the proxy advisory firms. But anyone who understands finance and markets has to recognize that (1) institutional investors rely on a wide range of sources for making all investment decisions,…
Harvey Weinstein is also a jerk. That alone should have gotten him fired. – The Washington Post
Emily Yoffe writes about the corporate governance failure at The Weinstein Company. She says even in the almost unthinkable case that the board and executives did not know about his constant sexual harassment and abuse (reportedly, his employment contract explicitly recognized it), they did know enough about his public inappropriate behavior to recognize that, as…
The truth about Jeff Immelt and General Electric’s corporate jets
VEA Vice Chair Nell Minow was asked to comment on reports that former GE CEO Jeff Immelt not only flew in a corporate jet but on some trips had a second GE jet follow with no passengers in case he needed a back-up. Corporate governance hawk Nell Minow told CNBC it is difficult to know…
When a Company Is Profiting From the Opioid Crisis – The Atlantic
On July 26, at the annual shareholder meeting of McKesson, the nation’s largest distributor of pharmaceuticals, including opioid drugs, shareholders refused to approve the company’s generous executive-compensation plan after the International Brotherhood of Teamsters—which holds stock in McKesson—campaigned against it, citing the company’s “role in fueling the prescription opioid epidemic.” McKesson rejected that characterization, and…
Rosanna Landis Weaver reviews The CEO Pay Machine
Our favorite expert on CEO pay, As You Sow’s Rosanna Landis Weaver, likes Steven Clifford’s new book, The CEO Pay Machine: How it Trashes America and How to Stop It. We recommend the book and Weaver’s review: Clifford takes apart all the components with a fresh eye. He is skeptical, for example, of the mantra…
It’s a dangerous time to be a bad CEO – The Washington Post
In its annual report, released Tuesday, the Conference Board found that among Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index companies that were in the bottom group of performers — as ranked by their total shareholder return — the CEO succession rate jumped five percentage points, from 12.2 percent in 2015 to 17.1 percent in 2016. That’s well above…
How Badly Must a C.E.O. Behave Before His Pay Is Clawed Back? – The New York Times
Gretchen Morgenson writes in the New York Times: [There is] a lawsuit unfolding in Delaware Chancery Court…that involves the former chief executive of United and a prime figure in the Bridgegate scandal that has dogged Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey. The facts of the case reflect a similar disdain for United’s shareholders by the…
