Finance directors are tomorrow’s CEOs
Where do CEOs come from? Ambitious finance directors. So it is worrying that FDs are no longer gaining experience outside their firms as non-execs so often.
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The Edge
Richard Northedge takes on corporate finance
Archive for the ‘Finance Director’ category
The flying ban gives more time to do business
Was your journey really necessary? Probably not, now that the Europeanwide flying ban has become the latest transport problem to prevent businessmen travelling. Grounding the continent’s executives is a good reminder than commerce can be conducted electronically quite efficiently.
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New code could leave companies leaderless
With big business in bad odour, asking directors to stand for re-election every year might look like improved accountability. But suddenly companies have worked out that it could mean the whole board being removed at one shareholders’ meeting leaving the businesses without bosses.
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Don’t forget the inside candidates
When companies need a new leader, why do they so often call in the City headhunters and search for external candidates instead of promoting from inside? Is it because the internal applicants’ faults are known while the unknown outsiders offer hope?
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Boardrooms stuffed with amateurs
The new corporate governance code to come in during 2010 will make a major concession: it accepts that boardrooms have become stuffed with independent amateurs, leaving insufficient executives who understand the business.
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The X Factor comes to the corporate board room
It’s hard enough finding good non-executive directors but now the regulators are looking at how they can be voted off the board as soon as they are appointed. The new corporate governance code could include annual re-election for all non-execs.
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Are foreign females really better than British women?
Women in boardrooms is usually seen as a sexist issues. It’s not; it’s about xenophobia. Selection committees are not anti-women but anti-British.
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Don’t treat the victims as villains
Why should ordinary companies be punished for the banks’ mistakes? Tough new corporate governance procedures designed to check failed financial institutions look like being extended to other businesses.
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Rewriting the governance code again
Another crisis, another corporate governance code. What started as Cadbury and developed into the Combined Code is being rewritten again. But if it changes so often, why should we think this will be the definitive version?
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Punishing directors on pay
After bankers and MPs, FTSE directors are now the target of public humiliation. Boards that thought the City was their ally have discovered it is their assassin.
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