I’m in London at ICGN and gave my speech this afternoon. I wasn’t able to present this entire paper due to time constraints but I’m offering it here for anyone who wants to read the entire thing.
Busy time in London: Spoke yesterday at the Responsible Investor conference, speaking at CSFI, Institute of Directors and Investor Forum next week. Many, many superb people here and I’m enjoying the chance to catch up with old friends.
Getting worldwide ownership to cooperate on an issue might seem like an effort in herding cats: everyone is going to do their own thing. The thing is, nobody is really doing their own thing. What we have is an uncoordinated body of ownership that blindly follows management.
The American Economy is a corporate system, in the sense that control of the economic factors of production and distribute is vested largely in the handful of privately appointed corporate managers.
As I read in the Crimson “Divest Harvard Plans Weeklong Blockade of Massachusetts Hall,” I had to ask myself: why I am not participating? Why not me?
Years ago I was interviewed for a documentary called The Corporation. A new documentary has been made using some of that old footage and I thought I’d share it with you. See what you think and look for me at about 12:35.
Since the financial crisis, I’ve made repeated calls for the Great and the Good to step become active and responsible owners (see this piece on the GMIRatings site). Actually, I started on this track before the crisis when I wrote a letter to Harvard – my alma mater –…
Happy monopoly describes the ongoing status of the SEC approved rating companies (Nationally Recognized Statistical Rating Organizations – NRSRO). Notwithstanding that the Financial Crisis Investigation Commission and Senator Carl Levin’s Subcommittee on Oversight confronted the CEOs of the big ratings firms whose crisis-related pay went up by a multiple…
1. The Elephant in the Living Room. The single best indicator of the state of corporate governance – a system of accountable power – is the capacity of senior management to increase their own compensation that has been going on for two decades. The metaphor of the elephant in…
