Laurie Havelock

North America’s leading governance professionals were toasted at an awards gala in New York this week Sallie Mae and VEON were the big winners at this year’s Corporate Governance Awards, with both companies scooping two trophies at a gala event in New York City. Student loans provider Sallie Mae scooped the trophy for the best director training and education program while its senior corporate paralegal, Megan Smagala, walked home with the rising star award after narrowly missing out on it last year. Meanwhile, telecoms company VEON won the title of best governance around a corporate transaction and recognition for the…

Plus new general counsel and chief compliance officer at Cellebrite Electricity utility Ameren Corporation has announced the appointment of David Feinberg as its new executive vice president, general counsel and corporate secretary. He comes the NYSE-listed company from American Electric Power Company, where he has served as executive vice president, general counsel and corporate secretary since joining the company in 2011. Before that, Feinberg served as vice president, general counsel and corporate secretary at Allegheny Energy, where he also held roles as senior litigation counsel and deputy general counsel. Earlier in his career, he was a partner at the law…

Plus new governance professionals in place at Fannie Mae and Helen of Troy When we talk about diversity in business, it’s usually in moral or social terms – fairness, inclusion and representation. But our new research suggests diversity also pays off in a very practical way: helping companies make better financial and investment decisions. Company boards often get the attention in discussions about corporate leadership. Yet much of the real decision-making happens within smaller, specialised board committees – groups of directors responsible for areas such as audit, risk, remuneration and sustainability. These committees are where many of the big investment…

Plus new legal chiefs at White Cap, Shentel and Qualitas Toronto-listed financial services company Manulife has brought in Mike Coyne as its new general counsel, effective from September 1, to replace the retiring Jim Gallagher. Coyne most recently served as senior fellow and litigation strategy advisor at the Bank Policy Institute, an advocacy and policy think tank for the world’s largest banking organizations. Prior to that, he worked as general counsel and senior legal officer for the Americas at Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group and spent more than 20 years at JPMorgan Chase & Co, rising to the position of senior…

Outgoing corporate secretary will stay on as strategic advisor Another week, another SEC update. This time, the regulator has confirmed that it will take a deep look at executive compensation disclosure requirements, starting with a roundtable later this month. The SEC, never one to let a disclosure rule gather dust, has decided it’s time to revisit the question of how – and how much – companies tell us about what they pay the people in charge. On June 26, the agency will gather an assortment of company reps, compensation advisers, lawyers and investors at its Washington HQ for a roundtable…

She will succeed current general counsel Kevin Reid, who is retiring Dubai-based telecoms company Veon has appointed Vitaly Shmakov as its acting general counsel, replacing the outgoing Omiyinka Doris. The firm, which is listed on the Nasdaq and was formerly traded on the Euronext Amsterdam exchange, said that Doris had chosen to step aside from her role as of July 1, but would continue as a strategic advisor to the group’s CEO. She joined Veon in 2015 and has served in various legal and capital markets roles. Doris ‘played a pivotal role in steering Veon to sustained success’ at a…

Current CLO is due to depart ‘in the coming months’, according to an SEC filing Our more eagle-eyed readers may have seen that the SEC’s Investor Advisory Committee met again earlier this week, meeting for a series of discussion panels tackling several key issues facing the capital markets. Nestled among them was a panel addressing non-GAAP financial disclosures and another that examined the issue of pass-through voting and engagement with beneficial owners. The practice of pass-through voting refers to the process of investors having more of a say in how asset managers vote on the proxies of the companies that…