Spencer Stuart: Governance Takes Center Stage

After years of gradually gaining momentum, investor attention to governance issues has suddenly spiked. Traditional institutional and activist investors have become more explicit in calling on boards to demonstrate that they are being thoughtful about who is sitting around the board table and that directors are contributing. Investors want to make sure that boards are diligent in defining the skill-sets needed around the table and recruiting the right directors, planning for CEO succession and evaluating their own performance. The responsibility for driving many of these areas falls to the board’s governance committee. As one director told Spencer Stuart, the governance committee has become the new center stage committee.

With governance garnering more attention than ever, Spencer Stuart set out to identify the best governance practices for boards as part of this year’s U.S. Technology Board Index.

Based on their work with boards, they have developed their own list of priorities, but wanted to gauge whether technology company boards face any unique challenges related to corporate governance. Spencer Stuart asked six technology company directors to weigh in on the list and the issues that their boards are prioritizing:

Tom A. Alberg, managing director of Madrona Venture Group and a principal in Madrona Investment Group, serves on the board of Amazon.com.

John G. Connors, managing partner at venture capital firm Ignition Partners, serves on the boards of Splunk and Nike.

Mercedes Johnson, former senior vice president and chief financial officer of Avago Technologies Limited, serves on the boards of Intersil Corporation, Juniper Networks, Micron Technology and Teradyne.

Edward A. Kangas, former chairman and CEO of Deloitte, Touche, Tohmatsu, serves as the non-executive chairman of United Technologies Corporation and Tenet Healthcare Corporation. He also is on the boards of Hovnanian Enterprises, Intuit and Intelsat S.A.

Catherine Kinney, former president and COO of the New York Stock Exchange, serves on the boards of NetSuite, MetLife, MSCI and Quality Technology Services.

Abhijit Y. Talwalkar, former president and CEO of LSI Corporation, serves on the board of Lam Research Corporation.

To read the 10 Best Practices for Boards by Spencer Stuart, click here.