Chicago Tribune columnist Andrew Leckey argues:
Corporate governance is generally best served if separate people are in the roles of chairman and CEO.
The chairman should be closely involved with the board and able to work out issues in a more detached manner than a CEO on the daily firing line. The chairman should have a broad perspective on the organization and the confidence to observe, offer advice and push for decisions that may not please the CEO.
Setting aside the question of whether anyone would take corporate governance advice from anybody who works for a company as messed up as the Tribune, as we saw last week there is little "evidence that separating the two roles improves corporate performance and/or has a positive stock price effect."
That poster-child of good corporate governance, Enron, divided the COB and CEO positions for the crucial period—between Lay and Skilling. The former is dead and the latter awaits sentencing. The benefit of dividing the two posts isn’t blindingly obvious from their biographies.
Next entry: Directors Obligations of Confidentiality
Previous entry: Losing Sight of the Issue
Are “corporate governance” and “corporate performance and/or [] the stock price” necessarily the same thing?