The current racial justice movement has created an environment in which corporations and other organizations are under pressure to reconsider and address their diversity and inclusion practices. Organizations that lack racial diversity in their corporate leadership – particularly on their boards of directors – have come in for increasing criticism and, as I have noted on this blog (most recently here), the possibility of board diversity litigation. In addition, beyond the scrutiny and litigation, the California legislature has passed a bill that would require publicly traded companies in the state to have at least one director from a minority community by the close of 2021.
It now appears that as a result of both the scrutiny, the legislation, and perhaps even because of the litigation threat, a number of companies have proactively taken steps to address these issues by pleading to add a Black director to their boards within a year.
Continue Reading Growing Number of Companies Pledge to Address Board Diversity Issues
In the following guest post, Peter A. Atkins, Marc S. Gerber, Kenton J. King, and Edward B. Micheletti of the Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom law firm weigh in on the long-running stockholders versus stakeholders debate. A version of this article previously was published as a Skadden client alert. I would like to thank the authors for allowing me to publish their article as a guest post on this site. I welcome guest post submissions from responsible authors on topics of interest to this blog’s readers. Please contact me directly if you would like to submit a guest post. Here is the authors’ article.
A group composed of 20 public company CEOs and leaders of institutional investors has released Commonsense Corporate Governance Principles 2.0, an updated set of corporate governance principles that are intended to provide “a basic framework for sound, long-term oriented governance.” The group includes such luminaries as Warren Buffett, the Chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, Mary Barra, the CEO of General Motors, and Ginni Rometty, the CEO of IBM. The new released document updates the group’s original principles first published in 2016. The principles as updated include some interesting guidelines for publicly traded companies and for their investors, in a number of key areas.
In yet another one of his early morning messages, late last week President Donald Trump stirred up a squall by 
It is axiomatic in the current global economy that every business needs to have a China strategy. Most business enterprises are drawn to the world’s most populous country and second-largest economy. But while China represents an attractive business marketplace, it can also in many respects be a perilous place to try to do business, particularly from a regulatory and compliance standpoint. While most businesses may recognize these challenges, many may struggle to try and address the concerns. A new book entitled “Governance, Risk and Compliance Management in China” (
It is now well known and understood that cybersecurity is a 
In the great pendulum swing that characterizes the mood toward government oversight of companies and corporate governance, the pendulum in the U.S. has swung against regulation and against mandated governance requirements. However, in the U.K., the pendulum is on the opposite end of the arc, as the current government is moving quickly to adopt new corporate governance requirements.
Just as the new Presidential administration leads a charge to 
One of the recurrent governance proposals to remedy corporate excesses has been the idea of clawing back the compensation paid to company officials who presided over corporate scandals. Both the Sarbanes Oxley Act and the Dodd-Frank Act included provisions mandating compensation clawbacks for corporate executives at companies that restate their financial statements. As Columbia Law School Professor John Coffee details in his November 21, 2016 CLS Blue Sky Blog article entitled “Clawbacks in the Age of Trump” (