Boards of public corporations in the United States are becoming increasingly independent, due to an effort to ensure that shareholders' interests in the company are protected. Yet, little attention has been given to the way that board members obtain and digest the information necessary for their...

Corporate governance scandals inevitably raise concerns about the extent to which corporate directors failed in their responsibility to monitor the corporation and its managers, especially in terms of the latter's' misdeeds. Corporate governance reforms strive to shore up directors' roles by...

Corporate governance has become a hot topic following accounting scandals at Enron, WorldCom and others, which led to colossal corporate collapses. In many of those cases, the boards were 'asleep at the wheel,' failing to catch managements' questionable accounting practices. The Sarbanes-Oxley...

In this paper, we provide an overview of the Italian legislation on interlocking directorates and its enforcement in the last decade. Italy is the only EU Member State to have introduced a specific anti-interlocking provision aimed at promoting competition in the banking, insurance, and...

For the last decade, investors, scholars and regulators have turned to independent directors in key leadership positions as a means to safeguard corporate boards' ability to serve as a robust check on management's power. As a result, a vast majority of public companies' boards are now led by an...

Investment advisers to mutual funds, exchange-traded funds, and separately managed accounts are typically delegated the authority to vote their clients' securities. When this delegation occurs, these investment advisers have a fiduciary duty to vote their proxies, typically the voting rights...

The Securities and Exchange Commission's (“SEC” or “Commission”) recent staff roundtable on the proxy process, and its resulting guidance, interpretation and proposed rules on limiting the use of shareholder proposals, regulating proxy advisors and their creation of shareholder voting...

Saudi Arabia has now opened its markets to foreign investors in line with its strategy to diversify its economy. However, investors need to feel confident that Saudi enterprises are being monitored and regulated appropriately. This study identifies the impact of improvements in Saudi corporate...

Section 2(a)(19) of the Investment Company Act classifies directors of mutual funds and other types of investment companies as either interested or not interested. Under section 10(a) of the Act, directors who are deemed not interested by section 2(a)(19) must comprise at least 40% of the board...

In the year 2016, the European Patent Organisation (EPOrg) implemented reforms which have brought a number of changes in the organisation and functioning of the (Enlarged) Boards of Appeal at the European Patent Office (EPO). The reforms have attracted significant attention by legal...