Archive
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Prudential Financial and Atlas Air named top governance teams at Corporate Governance Awards
Winners of Corporate Secretary’s 15th annual Corporate Governance Awards announced at celebration in New York Prudential Financial and Atlas Air Worldwide Holdings last night won two of the top categories at the 15th annual Corporate Governance Awards. Prudential Financial was named governance team of the year (large cap), while Atlas Air took home the trophy for governance team of the year (small to mid-cap). They and other companies were honored at a ceremony in New York – the first Corporate Governance Awards event to take place in person since the pandemic. The gala capped two days of live events hosted…
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Codexis appoints legal chief
Margaret Fitzgerald previously worked at Allakos Nasdaq-listed Codexis has appointed Margaret Fitzgerald as chief legal officer and general counsel. She now heads up the enzyme engineering company’s legal and compliance functions and reports to Codexis president and CEO Dr Stephen Dilly. Fitzgerald most recently was general counsel, corporate secretary and chief compliance officer at Allakos. In that role she provided legal advice on securities, litigation, intellectual property strategy, clinical development and commercialization matters. Before her time at Allakos, Fitzgerald was associate general counsel and privacy officer at Aimmune Therapeutics. Previously, she was vice president of corporate law at ZS Pharma.…
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Tenable hires former HP attorney as legal chief
Michelle VonderHaar was previously deputy general counsel and assistant secretary at HP Just one third of public companies have measures in place to achieve or fall below the 2°C by 2100 target set by the Paris climate agreement meaning that the planet is on track to be 2.9°C warmer by that date, according to MSCI. A new net-zero tracker report from MSCI, which follows progress made by the world’s listed companies toward tackling climate change, reveals that more than 50 percent of businesses are aligned with future temperature increases of more than 2°C. In addition, ‘listed companies would deplete their…
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Listed companies failing on climate plans, MSCI says
Only 16 percent of companies align with keeping global warming at or below 1.5°C threshold Cyber-security company Tenable has recruited Michelle VonderHaar as its chief legal officer and general counsel. VonderHaar most recently was senior vice president, deputy general counsel and assistant secretary at HP. In that role, she was involved in reshaping the company’s commercial global legal affairs team, expanding it from a three-region model to nine geographic markets, according to Tenable. Michelle VonderHaar Before joining HP in 2018, VonderHaar was senior vice president, general counsel and corporate secretary at Veritas Technologies. She has also previously held various legal…
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What you need to know about the SEC’s clawback rules
Carina Antweil, Robin Melman and Gail Stewart answer many of the questions in-house counsel may have about what the SEC’s newly approved clawback rules mean for boards and companies The SEC on October 26 adopted final recovery rules, commonly referred to as clawback rules, in a significant shift for executive compensation requirements. The rules direct national securities exchanges and national securities associations to establish listing standards requiring companies to develop, implement, disclose and comply with a written policy for recovery of erroneously awarded incentive-based compensation. These will apply where the payment of such compensation was made as a result of…
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The week in GRC: SEC accountant warns of fraud uptick amid economic fears and IRS clamping down on Russia sanctions evasion
This week’s governance, compliance and risk-management stories from around the web – CNN reported that, according to a securities filing, Twitter’s board of directors was dissolved following Elon Musk’s takeover of the company. The filing states that all previous members of Twitter’s board are no longer directors ‘in accordance with the terms of the merger agreement’. Almost immediately after Musk completed his $44 bn deal to acquire Twitter, he terminated at least four of its top executives. – Before the SEC adopted a new rule on clawing back executive pay, the agency and federal prosecutors had begun increasing their efforts…
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ESG tops list for director education, study finds
Large majority have received information or training on ESG in the past year, according to research Board directors are more likely to be being briefed on ESG matters than any other issue, according to new research from Corporate Secretary. Eighty percent of respondents say their board has received specific information or training over the past year on ESG matters, highlighting the rise of ESG as an area boards are taking seriously amid pressure from investors and other stakeholders. The next-most frequently cited topic on which boards have been provided with information or training in the last 12 months is corporate…
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Albemarle hires successor general counsel
Kristin Coleman to join company from US Foods Corporate Secretary’s ‘Director education and training: Ensuring the board has what it needs’ provides findings from a survey that offers useful insight into, among other things, who on the board oversees director education and training and who outside of the board provides those services, which topics boards are receiving specific information or training on, how frequently governance teams check whether their board has what it needs and how they rate their board’s ability to oversee the key issues facing the company. The findings in this report are based on an online survey…
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Director education and training: Ensuring the board has what it needs
Shareholders in Microsoft are set to vote on a proposal seeking information on managing risks from climate change in the company’s 401(k) plan. The vote will take place at the company’s AGM on December 13, one of the later meetings in the year. The resolution, filed by As You Sow, requests that Microsoft’s board ‘provide a report assessing how the company’s 401(k) retirement funds manage the growing systemic risk to the economy created by investing retirement plan funds in companies contributing significantly to climate change.’ In its supporting statement, As You Sow writes that this analysis should include whether the…
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Microsoft faces proposal over climate risks and 401(k) plan
Shareholders to vote at company’s December 13 AGM NYSE-listed Albemarle Corporation has hired Kristin Coleman as executive vice president, general counsel and corporate secretary, effective November 28. Coleman will report to chair and CEO Kent Masters. Coleman succeeds Karen Narwold, executive vice president, chief administrative officer, general counsel and corporate secretary, who will retire from Albemarle effective April 4, 2023. Coleman joins the specialty chemicals company from US Foods, where she has been executive vice president, general counsel and chief compliance officer since 2017. She was previously senior vice president, general counsel and corporate secretary at Sears Holdings Corporation, which…