Category: latest news

There are many players trying to influence boards. Whether they are senior executives trying to get their ideas heard, consultants looking to sell business, or activist shareholders hoping to change the direction of an organization, they are all looking to influence and persuade the board...

Boards may want to consider business strategy experience as an essential qualification for independent board chairs. Even as boards are increasingly expected to take on a strategic thought-partnership role, reported business strategy experience is declining among independent...

Directors were asked to select the top five trends that they believe will have the greatest effect on their company over the next year. Slightly more than half of respondents (50.1%) included the threat of an economic recession among their top five trends for 2024...

It is intuitive to think of board expertise as an unalloyed good. But we merge insights from interviews with nomination committee members with insights from the literature on group decision-making, to highlight ...

Companies faced a record number of attacks from activist investors in 2023 as disgruntled shareholders sought to oust directors or force the sales of businesses whose share prices had languished. There were 252 new campaigns globally, according to a report by investment bank Lazard...

Public companies (in Canada).... benefit from some key regulatory advantages, including a lack of independent vote-counting for shareholder meetings. Almost all shareholder votes are tabulated by a company’s transfer agent with direction from the chair – often a company insider – who gets to decide...

In recent decades, share buybacks have emerged as a global corporate phenomenon, albeit one accompanied by escalating controversy. While companies put forth various reasons for pursuing share buybacks, it is the argument that frames them as an attractive alternative to dividends for returning...

Some Canadian public companies are required to follow a federal law that requires them to disclose data on how many visible minorities, Indigenous people and people with disabilities sit on their board of directors. Other companies produce diversity ...

As a capital allocation decision, share buybacks intersect all three of the main corporate finance activities of investing, financing, and dividends. Buybacks continue to be very divisive, evoking comments like “derangement syndrome” by Cliff Asness, “economic illiterates” by Warren Buffett and “paper manipulation” by Sen...

The first one is that great meetings don’t just hinge on great people; they also need to be set up for success. So, to ensure the conversation remains focused and on topic, I write a pre-meeting note to the board that ...