Clik here to view.
Engaging Shareholders on Pay
Recent results on say-on-pay votes suggest that, at times when shareholders become unhappy with executive pay programs, boards are sometimes caught unaware. This lapse seems to happen for a couple of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
How to Gain Traction With ERM
Enterprise risk management (ERM) is an enigma. Line up 10 experienced business people and ask them what it is and you’ll likely get 10 different answers. While companies may believe they are...
View ArticleClik here to view.
It’s Nobody’s Business
I am always amazed as to how celebrities and well-known business personalities carefully guard their privacy but ignore it at death. To illustrate my point, the recent deaths of James Gandolfini and...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Channeling Ike
“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the [political and regulatory] complex. The potential for the disastrous...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Key Considerations For Comp in M&A
Many companies are again pursuing mergers and acquisitions (M&A) after several years of a relatively quiet market. A key element of making a merger or acquisition work is getting the compensation...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Five Risk Oversight Questions Directors Should Ask
There are many questions directors can ask about the organization’s risks and risk management as they discharge their risk oversight responsibilities. As the business environment changes, risk profiles...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Maximizing Your Comp Risk Assessment
At the height of the financial crisis, many believed that compensation policies and practices had contributed to the excessive risk-taking activity that had spawned the crisis itself. In response, the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Blaming BlackBerry’s Shareholders
If only John Chen, BlackBerry’s interim CEO, could turn back the clock to June 2008, the golden age for the Canadian technology giant. BlackBerry dominated the smartphone market. The company, then the...
View ArticleCommunications Challenges at the New Activism Frontier
The principal corporate governance campaigns of the past decade have reached a plateau in terms of both investor commitment and implementation. These governance issues (such as majority voting,...
View ArticleToo Big to Comprehend
A fitting epitaph to the 867-page leviathan known as the Volcker Rule is Samuel Johnson’s wry comment on Milton’s “Paradise Lost”: “The reader… lays it down and forgets to take up again. None ever...
View Article5 Lines of Defense: A Shareholder’s View
As the board of directors focuses its attention on risk oversight, there are many questions to consider. One topic the board should examine is how the organization safeguards against breakdowns in risk...
View ArticleStructure Pay Practices to Develop C-Suite Talent
In the best-run companies, CEOs and directors take considerable care in developing each leader and potential leader. They also pay leaders strategically as they progress on the talent-development...
View ArticleA Ranking of the Most Important Risks
Time marches on! Out with the old year, in with the new. But with changing markets and circumstances spawning new risks, altering risk profiles and reducing the effectiveness of established risk...
View ArticleUsing Pay to Change Culture
Members of the compensation committee play a key role in reinforcing corporate culture change through compensation program design and administration Many companies, at critical junctures in their life...
View ArticlePublic Policy, Regulatory Risk, and the Need to Engage
Business leaders often view Washington’s public policy and regulatory scene through the prism of media terms like “Washington Gridlock.” With all of the bad news from Washington there is a natural...
View ArticleOversight of IT Risk Management
Nowadays it’s a bit trite to observe that technology is evolving rapidly and transforming the way people live, interact, work and play. Deployment of technology to reduce costs, improve business...
View ArticleSay-on-Pay: Don’t Take Favorable Voting at Face Value
Since the 2010 Dodd Frank Act gave shareholders of public companies the right to an advisory vote on executive compensation practices, we’ve been tracking the results through our say-on-pay database...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Party Line
In spring 1987, President Ronald Reagan’s speechwriter, Peter Robinson, broke free from his entourage to join a suburban dinner party near Berlin. (You can read the full story in The New Criterion,...
View ArticleA Call for the Most Influential
Wanted: The names of corporate directors and corporate governance professionals who you believe represent the very best in corporate America. Attributes include experience, integrity, knowledge, and...
View ArticleRecognizing Emerging Risks
During a roundtable Protiviti co-facilitated in Chicago in late 2013, a director observed that he couldn’t get any of the boards on which he served to allocate time to discuss the “unthinkables.” The...
View Article
