Recruitment of under-40 directors is up, but is age diversity a sure bet for tackling the next generation of boardroom issues? Peter Pan notwithstanding, a fixation on youth is generally considered unhealthy in most contexts. In boardrooms, a dearth of age diversity is increasingly viewed as a sign of being out of step with the…
Directors report that they are stepping down in order to support their boards’ aims to refresh the board composition. While mandatory retirement age is still a main driver of board turnover, some directors are leaving their board seats because it’s “simply the right time.” Sandra Beach Lin, chair of the nominating and governance committee on…
Age Limits for Directors Still Not Common in All Indices Mandatory board retirement ages for directors vary by index. As the chart below with data from the CompanyIQ® corporate governance database shows, 90% of the Dow 30 companies and 80% of S&P 100 companies had an age limit of 75 or under for their directors…
Proxy Access Varies by Index – The right of shareholders to nominate directors for election to boards, known as proxy access, varies widely across the indices. Chart 1 with data from the CompanyIQ® corporate governance database has the details for eight common indices in 2017, the latest year with full data available. On the upper…
Given the amount of expertise, judgment and skill required in hiring a new CEO — to say nothing of time — special retainers for leading a CEO search or executive transition used to be de rigueur. But no longer. A survey conducted by TheCorporateCounsel.net asking if boards had paid a special fee for serving on a CEO…
Directors are paring down their board seats and opting not to stand for reelection or are alerting companies that they’ll be retiring or resigning, based on a review of recent filings. Directors at companies such as Exelon, Halliburton, Loews and J. Crew Group announced board departures this month, according to SEC filings analyzer MyLogIQ. Meanwhile, the FedEx board on Jan. 28 announced it had…
Women on America’s corporate boards are increasing but not at the pace that certain societal forces are demanding as indicated from CompanyIQ® ESG data. Concern over equal representation in US boardrooms has led to a 2018 state law mandating female board members in California. Other states including Colorado, Illinois, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania have adopted nonbinding…
Caterpillar has named chief executive Jim Umpleby as chairman of the board, reversing the company’s decision to split the roles last year, reports The Wall Street Journal. Though corporate governance experts argue that oversight and decision-making is improved if the two roles are separated, this only happens at about 40% of S&P 500 companies, according to MyLogIQ. The leadership structure…
At one time, being a member of the board of directors of an S&P 500 company might have meant attending a few meetings a year, having some meals at the company’s expense, and scoring a nice stipend. Those days are probably over for most publicly traded U.S. companies as demands for board oversight have been…
Caterpillar Inc.’s CAT 0.35% chief executive Jim Umpleby has been named chairman of the machinery giant’s board as well, cementing his leadership nearly two year into his tenure. The move reverses Caterpillar’s decision to split the CEO and chairman positions last year. Corporate governance experts say that having a separate chief executive and board leader can improve oversight and…