By Judith Samuelson for Huffington Post

Here's the challenge. To our core, going right back to the Dutch East India Company's role in settling America's largest city, we are a country that bleeds commerce and industry. A generation or two ago, it was a business association, the Committee for Economic Development, that called for and led the post-World War II transition from production of war machinery to an economy able to employ service men as they returned from the front. Business leadership, using its influential voice and collaborating across the country, averted another recession and propelled a period of expansion from which many of us are still benefiting.

The 2010 NACD Directorship 100 Recognizes the Most Influential People in Corporate Governance

PR Newswire

The National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD) announced the honorees today of its fourth-annual Directorship 100 – a combination of leading corporate directors, corporate governance practitioners and public policy leaders who are recognized as the most influential people in the boardroom and the corporate governance arena.

The 2010 Directorship 100 list recognizes individual corporate directors from such public companies as Accenture, AK Steel Holdings, Boston Scientific, Coca-Cola, Dreamworks Animation, Estee Lauder, Home Depot, Microsoft, Novell, Procter & Gamble, Travelers, Viacom, Xerox and Yum! Brands for their boardroom influence and leadership. Read more...

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.

By Inyoung Hwang for Medill Reports

WASHINGTON – Blame the bailout.

Washington has become a battleground for companies moving in a political direction. New public relations tactics and advertising approaches are on the rise as key DC decision-makers – and the public – keep a watchful eye on the business world, expecting a return on their investments. Read more...

The National Law Journal

Christopher Keller and Michael Stocker

 

"The CED panel suggested that this preoccupation with short-term results at the cost of long-term success was in large part due to the nature of the compensation packages being offered to management, particularly excessive payments to corporate executives to meet short-term and "low-aspirational" targets. The perils associated with these short-term performance goals, the panel explained, are only compounded by reliance on recruited executives who serve only short terms. When retirement is only one or two years away, there is little incentive to assess the long-term dangers posed by investments.

 

The CED's conclusions echoed a 2003 National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD) study, Blue Ribbon Commission Report on Executive Compensation and the Role of the Compensation Committee. The NACD recommended that publicly held companies use both qualitative and quantitative measures in compensating executives for performance, and decrease reliance on stock price as a performance measure."

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Portsmouth Herald

"Responding to the controversy in the current crisis in financial markets, the Committee for Economic Development re-emphasized that truly independent compensation committees of corporate boards are the key to bringing executive pay in line with company performance."

 

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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.

Financial Week

Nicholas Rummell

"Speaking today at Bloomberg News headquarters in New York City, Mr. Donaldson said 'the excessive focus by too many corporations on achieving short-term results, fanned by the practice of ceding to demands for regular guidance and forecasting, such as quarterly results, certainly is one of the root causes for some of the problems we face today.'"

 

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