Motherhood & apple pie – the latest corporate governance regulations for private companies

The FRC has set out new proposals for more corporate governance regulation (the Wates Report) for large private companies. This is my response to the consultation.       Summary High quality regulation should focus on outcomes and provide evidence to support new rules and principles. Both the government and the FRC seem to be …

Carillion – What can we learn?

The collapse of Carillion was a tragedy, especially for its 45,000 employees and 25,000 pensioners. In an earlier article, I looked at its last Annual Report to see if there had been clues that could have tipped readers off to the impending catastrophe. Since then, we have had Select Committee hearings and their January 2018 …

Carillion – a salutary reminder on due diligence

Carillion has entered the pantheon of cursed companies following its recent failure. Politicians and the media have worked themselves in another fit of righteous indignation about greedy management and incompetent boards. The search is out for people to blame, shame and even prosecute. Regulators, sensing the flow of the political wind, are climbing on the …

Escape from the Rock

I gave a nervous laugh. The headhunter asked me if I would like my first non-executive director role, joining the board of Northern Rock. It was October 2007, a few weeks since the first run on a UK bank for 150 years. Struck by an uncharacteristic sense of adventure, I did indeed agree to serve …

What are dividends?

  A simple question, I’m sure you’ll reply. Everyone knows that a dividend is money paid to shareholders by a company to reward them for owning its shares. However, a non-executive director needs to know a little more than this, as dividends can prove surprisingly complex.   A dividend is a form of shareholder distribution. …

“Marking our homework” – Why executives resent non-execs

  It won’t be long into your first non-executive job when you start to feel as if the executives resent you. It’s okay. You haven’t become paranoid. They really do resent you. Why?       Being an executive director is a tough job. You work all the hours that the Working Time directive allows, …

What’s your favourite part of being a non-executive director?

Now I’m going to take a wild guess here, that the least favourite part of a typical NED role is setting executive remuneration. To the media, and now even the government, it appears that NEDs love nothing more than awarding large pay increases, bonuses and pay-offs to executives. It often seems that investors share this …

New PM, but corporate governance is still a political punchbag

“I want to see changes in the way that big business is governed. The people who run big businesses are supposed to be accountable to outsiders, to non-executive directors who are supposed to ask the difficult questions, think about the long-term and defend the interests of shareholders. “In practice, they are drawn from the same, …

Dodgy statistics and wild claims just patronise women

Grant Thornton has just published a Report comparing the effect on corporate return on assets (ROA) of having women on an executive board across three countries (UK, US and India). It concludes that such diverse boards cause companies to perform "Materially better". The report quantifies the economic benefit from having more women executives on boards …

Why do we have corporate governance regulation?

What drives corporate governance regulation? Is it media focus, political pressure, or a need to ’do something’? Or is it sound analysis leading to thoughtful prescriptions? I suspect that pretty much everyone accepts that the answer is somewhere in the former list. Why does it have to be like this? Evidence-based medicine is a well-established …