In a recent news article it is reported that the Association of British Insurers (ABI) was disappointed to discover that only 46% of large UK companies are fully compliant with the Combined Code governance requirements. However, some notable achievements have been in the areas of performance evaluations and board leadership. A full 96% of FTSE 100 companies have a lead independent director.
Without reading the full ABI report, it is safe to assume that, at least in some important respects, the US still lags the UK. For instance, in 2003 77.4% of large US boards were headed by combined CEO-Chairs, whereas in the UK 93.4% of boards had separated out these positions. In the UK 69.1% of boards had a lead director position, whereas only 28.6% of boards in the US had such a position.
The most recent numbers from BoardAnalyst show that 69% of S&P 500 company boards are headed by a combined CEO-Chair position. Interestingly, the percent of smaller boards that combine this position is smaller at 60% - nine percent less than for large companies. In the US, the likelihood of a board having a combined CEO-Chair was somewhat correlated with the percent of outsiders on the board who served as active CEOs elsewhere. The correlation was weakly negative for UK boards.
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