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Thursday, 06 May 2010 |
CED and CSIS Host Corporate Governance Briefing
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| L-r: Ben Heineman, William Ezzell, Patrick Gross, Alfred Mockett |
Corporate governance reform is a vital part of restoring public trust in how American companies are run. On May 6, CED and The Hills Program on Governance at the Center for Strategic and international Studies (CSIS) hosted a briefing focused on corporate governance reform that featured keynote remarks from CED Trustee and CSIS Trustee Ben W. Heineman, Jr., Senior Fellow Distinguished Practitioner, Program on the Legal Profession, Harvard Law School Senior Fellow, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, and former Senior Vice President and General Counsel for General Electric Corporation.
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Thursday, 25 March 2010 |
CED Trustee Ben Heineman, Jr. was the lead speaker at a corporate governance briefing held at the Bloomberg headquarters building in New York City on March 25, 2010. The event was webcast and featured participation from the audience at the event and from around the world via the Internet and Bloomberg’s media terminals.
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Thursday, 25 March 2010 |
Boards & Risk Briefing: Under Attack - The New Assault on American Corporations
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| Ben W. Heineman, Jr. speaks with panelists and audience members following the program. |
CED, the Torrenzano Group, and the White House Writers Group hosted a March 25 briefing on corporate governance reform at the Bloomberg Headquarters in New York City. CED Trustee Ben Heineman, Jr. was the first speaker and outlined his work with CED on the policy brief, Restoring Trust in Corporate Governance: The Six Essential Tasks of Boards of Directors and Business Leaders. Bloomberg Television business anchor, Kathryn Hayes, served as moderator for the session, which was available on the Internet and through Bloomberg news terminals worldwide.
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Monday, 25 January 2010 |
CED Statement Aims to Focus Directors and Executives on Governance Essentials in Time of Economic Turmoil and Change
If American business leaders are to restore public confidence in how companies are run, boards of directors must discharge six essential, closely interrelated tasks. That is the message of a new CED policy brief, Restoring Trust in Corporate Governance: The Six Essential Tasks of Boards of Directors and Business Leaders. The brief was written by Ben W. Heineman, Jr., CED Trustee and former Senior Vice President and General Counsel for General Electric Corporation, with the consultation and advice from the CED's Subcommittee on Corporate Governance.
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Wednesday, 18 February 2009 |
CED Releases Recommendations in New Report
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| The Honorable William H. Donaldson |
CED has released a new report, Rebuilding Corporate Leadership: How Directors Can Link Long-Term Performance with Public Goals. The report concludes that corporate boards and the leaders they select must integrate relevant societal concerns, such as environmental and human rights considerations, into corporate strategy, to strengthen long-term competitiveness and the sustainability of both the corporation and the society in which it exists.
The report was released on February 18, 2009 in New York City at a Forum that featured a keynote speech by CED Trustee William H. Donaldson
[play part 1]
[play part 2]
. Donaldson, a former Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission is also the Chair of CED's Corporate Governance Subcommittee. On February 6th, Mr. Donaldson was named to an Advisory Board on Economic Recovery by President Barack Obama.
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Tuesday, 23 September 2008 |
Executive Compensation Needs Independent Review, Ties to Company Performance
Responding to the controversy in the current crisis in financial markets, CED, today reemphasized that truly independent compensation committees of corporate boards are the key to bringing executive pay in line with company performance. "If the Treasury is to buy questionable financial assets to shore up firms' balance sheets, the nation should require that those firms adhere to the best practices to determine fair executive compensation, based on performance. Shareholder and public confidence can be reestablished only by prudent pay packages tied to performance, with no outsized severance packages," said CED Trustee and former SEC Chairman, Roderick M. Hills. Mr. Hills chaired the CED Subcommittee on Corporate Governance which produced the 2006 report Private Enterprise, Public Trust: The State of Corporate America After Sarbanes-Oxley.
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Wednesday, 17 September 2008 |
The Bloomberg Building in New York City was the site for a September 17, 2008 symposium on the practice of earnings guidance by companies and stock market professionals. CED and others believe that an over-emphasis on quarterly earnings guidance leads to "short termism," or a negative and undue focus on hitting announced earnings goals. CED Trustee and former SEC Chairman William H. Donaldson provided the keynote address that started the session and linked the current turmoil in financial markets to "excessive focus by too many corporations on achieving short term results." His entire prepared remarks can be found here. CED has long advocated responsible corporate governance practices and in late 2007 released Built to Last: Focusing Corporations on Long-Term Performance, a report that examines the drawbacks of "short termism" and offers recommendations for curbing excessive earnings guidance.
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Wednesday, 27 June 2007 |
An increasingly short-term focus by many business leaders is damaging the ability of public companies to sustain long-term performance. This trend is hampering growth in the American economy. That is the message of a new report, Built to Last: Focusing Corporations on Long-Term Performance, from CED. The report was released at an event on June 27, 2007 in New York City that featured a keynote speech by William Donaldson, former SEC Chairman. Mr. Donaldson, a CED Trustee is the Chair of CED's Subcommittee on Corporate Governance, which produced the report. A panel of corporate governance experts took part in the release event. The report offers recommendations for corporations to improve performance by focusing on long-term goals and Former Chairman Donaldson believes an end to "short-termism" is necessary. "Short-termism" is defined as an undue focus on meeting quarterly forecasts and a lesser emphasis on long-term planning.
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Tuesday, 21 March 2006 |
Private Enterprise, Public Trust: The State of Corporate America After Sarbanes-Oxley
The highly visible accounting scandals that surrounded the collapse of Enron, WorldCom, and several other major companies -together with the revelation of fraud and other acts of malfeasance by corporate executive- have aroused public outrage, called into question the values and ethics of business leaders, and undermined the public's confidence in public companies. CED is concerned about the reality, as well as the appearance, of corporate impropriety.
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Tuesday, 13 April 2004 |
A keynote speech by William J. McDonough, Chairman of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) highlighted the CED corporate governance reform forum held at the Willard Hotel in Washington, D.C. on April 13th. Chairman McDonough outlined the work of the PCAOB (created by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002) and touched on reforms that he thinks are necessary to improve corporate governance and restore shareholder confidence. McDonough said he believes that excessive CEO compensation is a serious problem and that the practice of predicting corporate earnings must be reconsidered. The luncheon speech attracted 150 attendees from Washington business and political circles.
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