A push by corporate governance experts, shareholders and, in some cases, regulators to untangle the chairman and chief executive positions at U.S. public companies is gaining traction.

The percentage of S&P 500 companies whose chief executives also serve as chairman reached 45.6% in 2018, compared with 48.7% the year before and the lowest percentage in at least a decade, according to data compiled for The Wall Street Journal by ISS Analytics, the data intelligence arm of proxy adviser Institutional Shareholder Services Inc...

WASHINGTON—Publicly traded companies could have to put to a shareholder vote thorny proposals that they oppose if the government shutdown doesn’t end soon.

That is because the Securities and Exchange Commission, which is operating with a skeleton staff, must sign off on requests by companies to exclude proposals from a vote a...

Edward D. Breen just spent the last three years merging industrial bastions DuPont Co. and Dow Chemical Co. His next act? Taking the combination apart all over again...

Lawmakers, faculty and students are demanding more accountability from university boards as sexual-abuse and other scandals continue to shake U.S. campuses.

The boards that oversee universities have remained largely intact at schools including Michigan State University and the University of Southern California, where...

HOUSTON—Billionaire John D. Arnold is spending a chunk of his fortune to campaign against America's high drug prices. The drug industry is spending a chunk of its fortune to counter him.

Mr. Arnold is the biggest single spender on his side of the battle. He made his money placing bets on price swings in the natural-gas market, first as an energy trader at Enron, then at his own hedge fund...

Resideo Technologies has named its chief financial officer and board of directors as it prepares to become a stand-alone public company after it goes through the planned spinoff from manufacturing conglomerate Honeywell International...

An activist investor wants cosmetics company e.l.f. Beauty Inc. to give itself a makeover. Marathon Partners Equity Management LLC, which owns about 8.5% of e.l.f., plans to urge the discount cosmetics seller to either start a process to sell itself or refocus on core operations and reduce costs, according to a draft of a letter to its chief executive and chairman viewed by The Wall Street Journal. Marathon could release the letter publicly as soon as Wednesday. ...

In January, six months before the blockbuster accusations became public, Shari Redstone phoned fellow directors on CBS Corp.’s board to ask about rumors that the company’s chief executive, Leslie Moonves, was about to have a #MeToo moment...

When JD.com’s billionaire founder and CEO Liu Qiangdong was arrested last week on suspicion of rape, his company’s board of directors was technically powerless...

Hexo Corp. has drawn interest from an occasional activist investor, who fears the Canadian marijuana company will miss out on a frenzy of deal making in the budding industry. New York-based Riposte Capital LLC, Hexo’s second-largest shareholder with a roughly 2.5% stake, plans to urge the company to explore strategic alternatives and take advantage of the cannabis sector’s rapid growth, according to people familiar with the matter...

Sacramento officials are cheering a decision by the California Public Employees’ Retirement System to build what would be the tallest tower in its hometown. But some inside Calpers’ boardroom are concerned the 550-foot project represents too much risk. During a private meeting earlier this summer three Calpers directors voted against a new $550 million commitment to the proposed office-condominium-retail complex, according to people familiar with the situation...

More shareholders voted against executive-pay resolutions at U.K. companies this proxy season than last year, and some companies got strong dissent for these resolutions for the second year running. Executive pay was a particularly hot issue at the largest FTSE 100 companies, with 18 companies receiving more than 20% shareholder dissent compared with nine last year, according to a public register managed by the Investment Association, a trade body. ...

Activist investor Elliott Management Corp. has taken a big stake in Nielsen Holdings PLC and plans to push the TV-ratings company to sell itself. The New York hedge fund owns more than 8% of Nielsen, worth at least $640 million, people familiar with the matter said Sunday. Elliott, which has been launching campaigns at a blistering pace this year, could unveil the new effort as soon as Monday. Multiple...

Elon Musk’s surprising buyout idea for Tesla puts the spotlight on its board members, most of whom have close business or personal relationships with the electric-car company’s leader...

Salesforce.com promoted President and Chief Operating Officer Keith Block to co-chief executive, giving him shared leadership of the business-software company with its co-founder and chairman, Marc Benioff...

CBS said its board of directors was in the process of selecting an outside law firm to handle an independent investigation into allegations Chief Executive Leslie Moonves sexually harassed women...

CBS’s independent board of directors said they would investigate allegations of personal misconduct by the media company’s chief executive, Leslie Moonves, in response to claims in an as-yet-unpublished New Yorker article...

Gilead Sciences Chief Executive John F. Milligan will step down after 28 years at the company effective at the end of the year...

Phil Gramm and Mike Solon’s “Keep Politics Out of the Boardroom” (op-ed, July 19) criticizing the role of large index managers misrepresents State Street Global Advisors’ core investment mission. We engage with companies not to force arbitrary political or social “values” on them, but rather to promote long-term value for millions of investors saving for the future in a world that has become increasingly obsessed with the short term...

LONDON—Barclays PLC is considering doubling down on America. Under pressure from activist shareholder Sherborne Investors, the British bank is scrambling to boost its stagnant share price. One path forward: Chief Executive Jes Staley is weighing whether to scale up Barclays’s online U.S. retail bank, according to people familiar with the matter. Other moves could include rolling out its dominant U.K. payments platform stateside...

In a rare public protest, investors voted to unseat a longtime director at Bed Bath & Beyond Inc. and rejected the retailer’s executive compensation plan. About 60.5 million votes were cast against the re-election of Victoria Morrison, compared with 48 million that were cast in support of her staying on the board, according to a tally released by the company late Friday. Ms...

Compensation for directors of large U.S. companies continues to creep upward, with half paying a typical board member $300,000 or more last year, a new study finds.

Median pay for the non-management directors of 100 of the largest U.S. companies rose 3.4% from $290,000 in 2016...

Perry Ellis International Inc. PERY 0.87% agreed to go private in a deal valued at $437 million, four months after George Feldenkreis, the founder and former executive chairman, made a bid for the apparel company. A newly formed entity controlled by Mr. Feldenkreis will acquire the Perry Ellis shares for $27.50 each. The offer represents a premium of 21.6% to the company’s share price Feb. 5, the last day before the proposal from Mr. Feldenkreis...

WASHINGTON—Postcrisis rules have created new challenges for Trump-appointed regulators as they look at recalibrating the financial rule book, but the vast majority of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act isn’t going anywhere, Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Jay Clayton said Monday...