May has been a busy month for environmental, social, and governance (ESG) ratings and disclosure at the US asset management industry’s top regulator, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) between Chairman Jay Clayton's warning yesterday on ESG ratings and a recommendation earlier this month for ESG disclosures...
Succession planning should always be a business priority. However, during an unprecedented global pandemic with hundreds dying every day, planning for succession is simply mandatory...
A critical component in developing comprehensive client insights in your proposals is knowing how a client’s executives are compensated. Yet in my experience, most strategic account managers and sellers do not use executive compensation in their sales process...
Though former China Communist Party leader Mao Zedong famously said, "Women hold up half of the sky," gender imbalances persist in board memberships...
By putting environmental, social, and governance (ESG) at the heart of the world’s largest pension fund’s investments, Hiromichi Mizuno (known as Hiro) not only rocked the world of traditional pension finance but also had a profound impact on the cause of socially responsible investing...
AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson announced at the end of April that he’s stepping down. Stephenson said that he’ll serve in the capacity of executive chairman of AT&T’s board up until January 2021. Stephenson was a long-term company man...
According to the study, called “The Influence of Female Directors on Product Recall Decisions,” highly-defective medical products and treatments are recalled 28 days faster – 35% faster – when more than one woman is on the board of directors, compared to all-male boards...
Board of directors are realizing they have new roles to play, from champion of the culture to visionary prophet, from directing board congestion as a traffic cop to strategizing 3 moves ahead as a chess master, and finally in preparing to pass the baton in a relay race...
With the reopening of the economy, the pandemic “blame game” has begun. If fingers begin pointing at corporate directors, the famous risk observations of Donald Rumsfeld may offer a valuable resource...
The words diversity and inclusion appear very often as an inseparable pair, to the point that the term “Diversity & Inclusion” (D&I) is often treated as a single word...
The Walt Disney Company is a nearly 100-year-old giant global conglomerate, including holdings in theme parks, hotels, film studios, television stations (such as ESPN) and numerous other properties. Disney announced this week that it will furlough roughly 100,000 employees, representing about 50% of the company’s employees...
Last week, Domo, a publicly traded cloud software company based in American Fork, Utah announced that Joy Driscoll Durling has joined the company’s board of directors...
We discuss how the pandemic will impact M&A dealmaking for the foreseeable future, and how both buyers and sellers can minimize their business risk...
The coronavirus is creating enough pain to go around for everyone who works in the retail business, but just as with the disease itself, the range of severity is inconsistent...
The controversy surrounding the USS Theodore Roosevelt has been something of a media soap opera, involving an extraordinary mix of issues concerning public health, national security, politics and military tradition...
This morning, Zoom CEO Eric Yuan published an update to the company’s 90-day plan to improve the service’s well-documented security and privacy issues...
Before the COVID-19 pandemic took over captains of industry were queuing up to champion stakeholder capitalism. A growing and long overdue consensus was emerging that shareholder primacy is not the be-all and end-all, and business should take a more long term view, looking after other stakeholder interests too including those of customers, employees and local communities...
Amidst a global health crisis, there is little else discussed in today’s news cycles but, perhaps now more than ever, it is important to highlight the significant role diversity plays in problem solving...
We have seen our fair share of CEOs enriching themselves at the expense of their shareholders and employees. They’ve been richly awarded with lucrative pay packages as their companies have engaged in aggressive stock buybacks, which boosted the value of their stock and options holdings...
We continue to read about layoffs and the still-looming tsunami of downsizings. More than three million workers are expected to file for unemployment benefits before the summertime, due to the impact of the coronavirus...
There’s a lot of discussion these days about preparedness. Preparedness for the pandemic, preparedness for the recession, preparedness for the unknown and the unthinkable. And there’s a lot of discussion about blame as well. They should have seen it coming, they should have seen the signs, they should have had a plan...
Despite the current challenges being endured by startup communities all over the world as a result of COVID-19, ongoing geopolitical tensions and stock market destabilization, 2020 is still a pretty good time to be a founder looking to grow a business in the burgeoning global tech sector...
The role of the corporate director and the responsibilities of the board have never been more challenging — yet vital in creating and protecting the companies and stakeholders that corporate directors serve...
