Corporate Governance in the Global Economy - The Changing Role of Directors

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Jan 18, 2016
by Louise Hallman
Corporate Governance in the Global Economy - The Changing Role of Directors

Report from inaugural Salzburg Global Forum on Corporate Governance now available online

The report from the inaugural session of the new multi-year series, the Salzburg Global Forum on Corporate Governance is now available online to read, download and share.

The October 2015 session Corporate Governance in the Global Economy: The Changing Role of Directors brought together 50 directors, senior managers, lawyers, judges, regulators, policy-makers, and academics from 16 different countries.

While participants were able to discuss their own professional experiences under Chatham House Rules, which provided a comfortable and open setting to share diverse and diverging opinions. Key conclusions in the report include:

  • Enhancing corporate profit and shareholder gain remain the foremost purpose of corporations worldwide, and investor expectations generally constrain the pursuit of other objectives;
  • The role and structure of the board will continue to evolve in response to further developments in the regulatory landscape, social values, and cultural norms;
  • The skills and leadership styles of directors are at the very core of corporate effectiveness, accountability to shareholders, and responsiveness to social pressures;
  • Businesses around the world fail or suffer systemic losses because they fail to anticipate risk; and
  • Shareholder activist investing is a much more prevalent phenomenon in the US than in other countries, but is becoming more significant in some other jurisdictions as well.

The session was hosted in partnership with BNY Mellon, Goldman Sachs, and Shearman & Sterling LLP, and was sponsored by Barclays, LIXIL, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, Mars, Potter Anderson & Corroon LLP, the state of Delaware, and Warburg Pincus, with additional support from the University of Pennsylvania. 

Download the report as a PDF