Will the call for mandatory audit firm rotation be renewed?
Cooley PubCo, 5/22/2018 Starting in 2018, new rules required disclosure of auditor tenure in audit reports. (See this PubCo post.) And, for some companies, those tenures can stretch over a century. For example, KPMG reported that [...]
What companies can learn from Amazon’s shareholder letter
IR Magazine, April 26, 2018 By any measure, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’ 4,300-word annual letter to shareowners, which was released last week, is a long document. But Bezos only devotes about half of his letter [...]
These are the 10 tech companies with the most diverse boards
CNBC, April 26, 2018 In the struggle to achieve representative boards, some companies are pulling ahead. For years, the tech industry has grappled with issues surrounding diversity and inclusion. And while there are still improvements to be made, a [...]
G&A Institute Research Results: 85% of the S&P 500® Index Companies Published Sustainability / Responsibility / CR / Citizenship Reports in 2017
Governance & Accountability Institute, 03/26/2018 Louis Coppola, EVP of G&A Institute who designs and manages the analysis, notes: “Entering 2018, just 15% of the S&P 500 declined to publish sustainability reports. The practice of sustainability [...]
Board Oversight of Cybersecurity
WilmerHale, 03/26/2018 Cybersecurity is one of the highest priority issues for public company executives and directors. This note shares our views—developed over our involvement in the aftermath of many cybersecurity events as well as counseling [...]
Drafting 10-K Disclosures for the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act
Dodd-Frank.com, 01/25/2018 Public companies with fiscal quarters ended December 31, 2017, but not fiscal year ends, are beginning to make disclosures showing the effects of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act in recently filed Form [...]
Heads Up for the 2018 Proxy Season: BlackRock Updates its Proxy Voting Guidelines
Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP, 02/08/2018 BlackRock recently published its updated Proxy Voting Guidelines for U.S. public companies. The guidelines are in keeping with the perspectives expressed in BlackRock’s October 2017 Investment Stewardship Global Corporate [...]
Carl Icahn will nominate four directors to Xerox board
Fortune.com, 12/11/2017 Xerox announced that activist investor Carl Icahn's organization will nominate four directors at its annual shareholder meeting in 2018. Former Icahn Capital managing director Jonathan Christodoro resigned from Xerox's board to allow the nominations [...]
UK corporate governance code changes to hit dozens of chairmen
Financial Times, 12/11/2017 (subscription required) The proposed rules, set out in the UK's revised corporate governance code last week, state for the first time that chairmen should step down from their role after nine years [...]
Boards Will Reach Gender Parity in 2055 at Current Pace
Equilar, 1/31/17 "The new Equilar Gender Diversity Index (GDI) revealed that it will take nearly 40 years for Russell 3000 boards of directors to reach gender parity. If the current rate of growth remains the same, [...]