GlobalProxyWatch's recent Newsletter summarized Michael Woodford'sriveting speech at the spring meeting of the Council of Institutional Investors, including his advice to the TSE to promulgate rules requiring issuers to provide executive directors with comprehensive training “to better acquaint them with their legal duties and liabilities.”
Below is an excerpt. You can sign up for Global ProxyWatch's popular Newsletter here: http://www.proxywatch.com/
BRIEFINGS
Some 500 governance experts gathered in Washington, DC Sunday to Tuesday for a meeting of the Council of Institutional Investors (CII):
Michael Woodford. The former Olympus CEO delivered a riveting personal account of his confrontation with former chair Tsuyoshi Kikukawa over the accounting scandal (GPW XVI-02). “He told Olympus executives not to talk to me about the reports [in a Japanese magazine about the problems]. When I asked him why he didn’t tell me about them, he said: ‘You’re the president, you’re too busy to worry about these things. They are domestic issues.” Woodford’s conclusion: “If you’re looking to invest in Japan, my advice is: don’t.” Expect more consternation in Japan from his tell-all book, due out in Japanese in a few weeks with an English edition in October. The week before the CII meeting, he submitted comments to the Tokyo Stock Exchange blasting as “entirely insufficient” its proposed listing rule changes calling for a single independent director (GPW XVI-12). Woodford also recommended requiring issuers to provide executive directors with comprehensive training “to better acquaint them with their legal duties and liabilities.”
The Board Director Training Institute (BDTI) is a "public interest" nonprofit in Japan dedicated to training about directorship, corporate governance, and related management techniques. It is certified by the Japanese government to conduct these activities as a regulated nonprofit. Read a summary about BDTI here, and see a menu of its services for both corporations and investors here.