The fiduciary duties of members of corporate boards are usually invoked in connection with directors’ potential liability exposures. However, in their January 2015 Harvard Business Review article entitled “Where Boards Fall Short” (here), Dominic Barton, global managing director of McKinsey & Co., and Mark Wiseman, President and CEO of the Canada
Board Governance
SEC Commissioner Aguilar Addresses Cybersecurity Oversight Responsibilities of Corporate Boards
In a June 10, 2014 speech entitled “Boards of Directors, Corporate Governance and Cyber-Risks: Sharpening the Focus” delivered at the New York Stock Exchange, SEC Commissioner Luis A. Aguilar highlighted the critical importance of the involvement of boards of directors in cybersecurity oversight. In his speech, Aguilar stressed that “ensuring the adequacy of a company’s …
Guest Post: Cyber Security, Cyber Governance, and Cyber Insurance: What Every Public Company Director Needs to Know
As I have frequently noted on this site (refer, for example, here), cyber security issues increasingly are a board level concern, and indeed, recent shareholder litigation has shown that investors intend to hold board members accountable when data breaches cause problems for their companies. In the following guest article, which was previously published…
Some Thoughts About “Board Accountability”
Yahoo’s board members may or may not be “doofuses” as departed Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz declared after they sacked her, but the one thing for sure is that the events surrounding her firing, and the more recent CEO turnover at H-P, sure have folks riled up. Whatever else you want to say about these events…
Berkshire Board Audit Committee: Sokol Violated Policy, Lacked Candor
Berkshire Hathaway’s Audit Committee has determined that David Sokol’s trades in Lubrizol shares prior to Berkshire’s announced acquisition of the company “violated company policies.” It also determined that his “misleadingly incomplete disclosures” to Berkshire management “violated the duty of candor he owed the Company.” The Audit Committee reported these findings in an April 26 report…
Do Comp Reform Proposals Threaten Increased Board Exposures?
One of the propositions on which most commentators seem to agree is that perverse compensation incentives helped fuel the global economic crisis. For example, last Wednesday, formed Fed Chairman Paul Volcker said in a speech that one of the causes of the financial crisis "was the ultimately explosive combination of compensation practices that provided enormous…