Key Takeaway: TEPCO’s board may be more independent, but Japan, Inc is still slow to improve broader governance even as Singapore, HK advance
Month: May 2012
Deloitte’s “Three Minute Guide” to Risk Analytics
It seems like it's always worthwhile to know about new takes on how to think about risk. Here is Deloitte's Three Minute Guide to risk analytics:
GMI Ratings Governance Issue: JPMorgan Chase & Co. Gets an “F”
The following entry appeared as part of GovernanceMetrics International’s GMI Blog. GMI is the leading independent provider of global corporate governance and ESG ratings and research. Corporate stakeholders – including leading investors, insurers, auditors, regulators and others – use GovernanceMetrics services to identify and monitor risks related to non-financial measures covering key environmental, social, governance and accounting risk factors.
Robeco Report on Sustainablity Investing
Robeco has published its highly useful annual report on responsible/ sustainability investing.
Forbes Article: ” Why Jack Welch Is Spectacularly Stupid When It Comes To Women”
Forbes has a very well-done piece about diversity on boards and in mangement. Here's a guote: The father of the performance culture and former General Electric chairman and chief Jack Welch thinks women just aren’t working hard enough…. The article then goes on to give lots of hard data about why this conclusion just isn't justifed.Here's the article:
Glass Lewis Analysis re Deutsche Bank, and Voting Recommendations – for May 31st AGM
We would like to bring the attached proxy analysis and voting recommendations, which Glass Lewis published on Friday, to your attention. The analysis of agenda item four, ratification of the acts of the supervisory board / approval of the discharge of the supervisory board, on pp. 8-12, is of particularly high quality, as it demonstrates an understanding of the underlying legal concept as well as a qualitative rather than a box-ticking approach.
Book: ” Business Law in Japan – Cases and Comments – Intellectual Property, Civil, Commercial and International Private Law”
Edited by: Moritz Bälz, Marc Dernauer, Christopher Heath, Anja Petersen-Padber.Note:Harald Baum is an Advisorto BDTI – Compilations of cases with commentary – in Japanese Hanrei Hyakusen – often provide the most practical way to obtain a quick and reliable understanding of a specific field of law, as well as guidance on how best to proceed i
To Save Mankind from itself, Governance Must Catch up with Technology
(BDTI Representative Director recently wrote this piece for the Give2Asia Blog.) http://asianphilanthropy.org/?p=1955Nowadays, we are seeing a lot of corporate governance and risk management blow-ups. Many of these failures result in massive risk externalization events, in which the company causes so much damage that it goes bankrupt or otherwise can’t compensate for the huge trouble and losses it has caused.
The Increasing Influence of Proxy Advisors and Their Regulation
Shareholders’ voting rights are supposed to be a fundamental asset, giving shareholders a say in the most important corporate decisions. However, institutional investors had seldom used theirs as they are rationally apathetic; it made more sense for them to sell their stocks when a company is under-performing. Facing mandatory-voting regulations, they have outsourced proxy voting to proxy advisors. Those consulting firms provide voting recommendations and technological support to investors to cast their votes.
Cooking the Books: The Cost to the Economy
Having seena number of massive risk externalization events over the past few years – Lehman, AIG, BP oil spil, Tepco, Livedoor, Greece, possibly Olympus,etc.