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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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Boots invented the three-for-the-price-of-two offer. Now in a clever deal that many finance directors will hope to copy, the chemists’ new owners have paid off a chunk of its debt on just that basis.
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