Risk: Page 26
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geralt. "Financial Crisis Stock Exchange Tendency" [Illustration]. Retrieved from Pixabay.
Audit Board Proposes New Ethics Rules
The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board unanimously approved for public comment new ethics rules concerning independence, tax services, and contingent fees.In early 2003, noted the PCAOB, the Securities and Exchange Commission adopted new independence rules that don’t prohibit a company’s o...
By Stephen Taub • Dec. 15, 2004 -
geralt. "Financial Crisis Stock Exchange Tendency" [Illustration]. Retrieved from Pixabay.
How to Separate the Roles of Chairman and CEO
U.S. companies are increasingly separating the roles of the chairman and the chief executive officer. Boeing, Dell, the Walt Disney Company, MCI, Oracle, and Tenet Healthcare have all done so during the past year, and a new study (by Governance Metrics International) finds that roughly one-third ...
By The McKinsey Quarterly • Dec. 14, 2004 -
geralt. "Financial Crisis Stock Exchange Tendency" [Illustration]. Retrieved from Pixabay.
Tale of Two Poison Pills
Electronic Data Systems (EDS) and Fortune Brands announced last week that they are eliminating their poison pills, but the new policies that have replaced them may not be as sincere as they appear.The two companies are each establishing their own versions of so-called “fiduciary-out” policies, wh...
By Stephen Taub • Dec. 13, 2004 -
geralt. "Financial Crisis Stock Exchange Tendency" [Illustration]. Retrieved from Pixabay.
Shareholder Firm Targets El Paso CFO
Glass Lewis & Co., the shareholder advisory firm, is reportedly calling for El Paso Corporation to replace Chief Financial Officer Dwight Scott.Further, citing El Paso Corp.’s significant restatements, Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) and Glass Lewis recommended that shareholders of t...
By Stephen Taub • Nov. 10, 2004 -
geralt. "Financial Crisis Stock Exchange Tendency" [Illustration]. Retrieved from Pixabay.
The Staggering of Staggered Boards
A growing number of companies is agreeing to eliminate the practice of staggering the years in which individual board members are elected.Indeed, the percentage of companies in the S&P 500 that have classified, or staggered, boards fell from 63 percent in 2001 to 60 percent in 2003, according...
By Stephen Taub • Oct. 29, 2004 -
geralt. "Financial Crisis Stock Exchange Tendency" [Illustration]. Retrieved from Pixabay.
Pensions Pressure Halliburton Proxies
A group of pension funds is continuing to apply pressure on the Securities and Exchange Commission to enact rules that would make it easier for outside shareholders to nominate directors not necessarily picked by management.On Wednesday, the Connecticut Retirement Plans and Trusts and the America...
By Stephen Taub • Oct. 29, 2004 -
geralt. "Financial Crisis Stock Exchange Tendency" [Illustration]. Retrieved from Pixabay.
Splitting Top Jobs Pays, Says New Study
Is a company better off when two people hold the positions of chairman and chief executive officer?Shareholder activists have clamored for this arrangement for years, and the number of companies following the practice has been climbing, albeit very slowly. In May, CFO.com reported on a study that...
By Stephen Taub • Oct. 22, 2004 -
geralt. "Financial Crisis Stock Exchange Tendency" [Illustration]. Retrieved from Pixabay.
Chief Executives: Passing the Baton
Patrick Cescau is settling into his new job as the head of Unilever having taken over from Niall Fitzgerald. The transition was smooth: when Mr Fitzgerald took the post he said he would hold it for eight years, and his eight years are up. In February, he said Mr Cescau, a 30-year veteran of the A...
By Economist Staff • Oct. 15, 2004 -
geralt. "Financial Crisis Stock Exchange Tendency" [Illustration]. Retrieved from Pixabay.
Director Pay Rising with Responsibility
Total compensation for board members surged between 20 and 35 percent last year. However, this growing largesse has come at the cost of significant increases in responsibility and accountability in light of new corporate governance initiatives such as Sarbanes-Oxley, according to a new survey fro...
By Stephen Taub • Oct. 14, 2004 -
geralt. "Financial Crisis Stock Exchange Tendency" [Illustration]. Retrieved from Pixabay.
A Trademark Move
In the late 1990s, business-method patents came into vogue as Internet pioneers staked out intellectual property. Priceline.com patented its “reverse auction” sales method in 1998, for example, and Amazon.com patented its “one-click” ordering system a year later.Now financial-services firms are g...
By Ilan Mochari • Oct. 6, 2004 -
geralt. "Financial Crisis Stock Exchange Tendency" [Illustration]. Retrieved from Pixabay.
The SEC Flexes Its New Muscle
Two years after Congress voted to boost its budget, the Securities and Exchange Commission has nearly completed a monumental hiring binge, adding 932 employees between December 2002 and July 2004, which boosted staff to 3,520 after attrition. Now that the agency has beefed up, how will its approa...
By Don Durfee • Oct. 5, 2004 -
geralt. "Financial Crisis Stock Exchange Tendency" [Illustration]. Retrieved from Pixabay.
Governance Champs Outperform the Market
Good corporate governance seems to pay. A group of 26 companies that got the highest score from GovernanceMetrics International’s twice yearly corporate governance ratings outperformed the S&P 500 Index.The good-governance group outperformed the S&P 500 in terms of total returns for each ...
By Stephen Taub • Sept. 10, 2004 -
geralt. "Financial Crisis Stock Exchange Tendency" [Illustration]. Retrieved from Pixabay.
Who’s the Boss?
In the old days, back before Sir James Goldsmith and greenmail and merger mania, shareholders were a quiet, unobtrusive lot. They followed the ups and downs of the market, rarely attended annual meetings, and dutifully filed company announcements in the trash. Proxy battles were like volcanoes in...
By John Goff • Sept. 1, 2004 -
geralt. "Financial Crisis Stock Exchange Tendency" [Illustration]. Retrieved from Pixabay.
New Chairman at Martha Stewart Living
Thomas Siekman, a lawyer and former executive for Compaq Computer, was named the chairman of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia Inc. after Jeffrey Ubben stepped down, according to wire-service reports.Ubben, whose firm ValueAct Capital is the largest investor in the company after Martha Stewart hers...
By Ed Zwirn • July 29, 2004 -
geralt. "Financial Crisis Stock Exchange Tendency" [Illustration]. Retrieved from Pixabay.
Double Standards?
With all the talk about governance and accountability, you might assume that all public companies have a majority of independent directors on their boards. Well, not exactly. In fact, a surprising number of companies, including Primedia Inc. and Weight Watchers International Inc., are identifying...
By Kate O'Sullivan • July 8, 2004 -
geralt. "Financial Crisis Stock Exchange Tendency" [Illustration]. Retrieved from Pixabay.
More Board Independence, Less Fraud?
The more independent directors on a company’s board, the less likely it is to be accused of fraud, according to a study published in the June issue of Financial Analysts Journal, a publication of the CFA Institute.Three professors — Hatice Uzun of Long Island University, Samuel Szewczyk of Drexel...
By Stephen Taub • June 29, 2004 -
geralt. "Financial Crisis Stock Exchange Tendency" [Illustration]. Retrieved from Pixabay.
Calpers Cites Four for Poor Governance
Calpers, the largest U.S. pension fund, placed Royal Dutch/Shell, Walt Disney Co., Emerson Electric Co., and Maytag Corp. on its 2004 “focus list.” Translation: The companies are “both poor economic performers and have corporate governance structures that do not ensure full accountability to comp...
By Stephen Taub • June 11, 2004 -
geralt. "Financial Crisis Stock Exchange Tendency" [Illustration]. Retrieved from Pixabay.
Corporate Boards Undergo Shakeup
Even though it’s getting tougher to hire new board members, most corporations are doing it, a new survey suggests.Indeed, 54 percent of the 220 representatives of the large North American businesses participating in the study said their companies have brought in new directors this year. At the sa...
By Stephen Taub • June 9, 2004 -
geralt. "Financial Crisis Stock Exchange Tendency" [Illustration]. Retrieved from Pixabay.
Major Investors Back Proxy Access
Institutional investors overwhelmingly support the Securities and Exchange Commission’s proposed rules that would open up the director nomination process, according to a survey by Broadgate Consultants Inc.Nearly 80 percent of the 120 buy-side money managers and research professionals who respond...
By Stephen Taub • June 2, 2004 -
geralt. "Financial Crisis Stock Exchange Tendency" [Illustration]. Retrieved from Pixabay.
Qwest Defeats Shareholder Proposals
Shareholder proposals intended to change the structure of the board of directors of Qwest Communications International Inc. were easily defeated at the company’s annual meeting on Tuesday.A measure requiring that board members be independent, without business ties to Qwest, received just 28.8 per...
By Stephen Taub • May 27, 2004 -
geralt. "Financial Crisis Stock Exchange Tendency" [Illustration]. Retrieved from Pixabay.
Gillette Dissidents Press Harder
A resolution calling for the annual election of the Gillette Co.’s board of directors received support from 68 percent of the shares voted at Thursday’s annual meeting.The measure, which was led by Christian Brothers Investment Services Inc. and activist investor Walden Asset Management, urged th...
By Stephen Taub • May 21, 2004 -
geralt. "Financial Crisis Stock Exchange Tendency" [Illustration]. Retrieved from Pixabay.
Splitting Top Jobs Overrated, Says Study
Companies that split the positions of chairman and chief executive officer perform worse than companies with just one person handling those roles, according to a new study from Booz Allen Hamilton.That is one finding of the consultancy’s survey of CEO turnover at the world’s 2,500 largest publicl...
By Stephen Taub • May 19, 2004 -
geralt. "Financial Crisis Stock Exchange Tendency" [Illustration]. Retrieved from Pixabay.
Onetime Enron Director Departs Qualcomm
Qualcomm Inc. announced the resignation of Frank Savage, a former director of Enron Corp., from its board of directors. He had served on the board since 1996.Qualcomm gave no reason for the resignation. In a statement, chairman and CEO Irwin Jacobs said only that “Frank Savage has served Qualcomm...
By Stephen Taub • May 18, 2004 -
geralt. "Financial Crisis Stock Exchange Tendency" [Illustration]. Retrieved from Pixabay.
Calpers Targets AT&T, Sears, Ford
Calpers last week said it will withhold votes for directors at nearly 20 companies, including AT&T, Sears, and Ford. Most of the newly named companies are holding their annual meetings this week.At AT&T, as in a majority of the prior cases, Calpers is opposing directors because their audi...
By Stephen Taub • May 10, 2004 -
geralt. "Financial Crisis Stock Exchange Tendency" [Illustration]. Retrieved from Pixabay.
The Lunatic You Work For
To the anti-globalisers, the corporation is a devilish instrument of environmental destruction, class oppression and imperial conquest. But is it also pathologically insane? That is the provocative conclusion of an award-winning documentary film, called “The Corporation”, coming soon to a cinema ...
By Economist Staff • May 7, 2004
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