The Independent Director and the Investor: New Directions

Neville Bain and David Band

Chapter 4 in Winning Ways through Corporate Governance, 1996, pp 79-91 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract If capitalism came to an end in 1996, its future historians would no doubt write that, at the level of governance, its last five years were its most tumultuous. We are living in a time of unprecedented upheaval in, or reform of, corporate governance, depending on one’s point of view. Around the western world, corporate boards are becoming much more vigorous in exercising their responsibilities. In some well-publicised cases, this has led to open conflict with senior management. Such conflict reflects the increased anxiety many boards are feeling about their companies’ stewardship and performance. Reflecting on just one country’s recent experience will make the point. Over the past few years, American Express, Citicorp, Digital, General Motors, Goodyear, IBM, Kodak, Sears and Westinghouse have each been subjected to major, independent director-driven upheaval. The directors of these and numerous other corporations have overridden senior executives to demand large-scale reforms, frequently involving a change of CEO. Usually behind such moves has been the increasing restiveness of activist shareholders. It has been said, with some justification, that we have moved from entrepreneurial capitalism to managerial capitalism and now to shareholder capitalism.

Keywords: Corporate Governance; Board Member; Independent Director; Chief Executive; Large Shareholder (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1996
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:palchp:978-1-349-14158-6_4

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.palgrave.com/9781349141586

DOI: 10.1007/978-1-349-14158-6_4

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Palgrave Macmillan Books from Palgrave Macmillan
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().