The following post comes to us from Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP and is based on a chapter of Getting The Deal Through—Corporate Governance 2014, an annual guide that examines issues relating to board structures and directors’ duties in 33 jurisdictions worldwide.
Corporate governance remains a hot topic worldwide this year, but for different reasons in different regions. In the United States, this year could be characterised as largely “business as usual”; rather than planning and implementing new post-financial crisis corporate governance reforms, companies have operated under those new (and now, not so new) reforms. We have witnessed the growing and changing influence of large institutional investors, and different attempts by companies to respond to those investors as well as to pressure by activist shareholders. We have also continued to monitor the results of say-on-pay votes and believe that shareholder litigation related to executive compensation continues to warrant particular attention.
