Thursday, July 27, 2006

Separating the roles of chairman and chief executive: Looking at both sides of the debate


Following the corporate scandals of the early 2000s, many governance observers and commentators in the United States began to discuss whether, in order to avert such crises in the future, boards should separate the roles of chairman and chief executive officer, a practice common to governance models in the United Kingdom, much of the rest of Europe, as well as Canada and Australia.

While some in the US embrace the notion of separating the roles of chairman and CEO, others reject the division of power. To delve further into both sides of the issue, we asked two boardroom experts to share their individual and distinctive points of view. David Kimbell is co-leader of Spencer Stuart’s Board Services Practice in Europe. David specializes in chairman and CEO assignments and was the firm’s worldwide chairman from 1987 to 1999 and co-chairman from 1999 to 2003. Tom Neff is chairman of Spencer Stuart in the US. Tom also is the founder of the Board Services Practice in the US, having conducted more than 400 board searches and 150 CEO searches over the past 20 years. He serves on the boards of two New York Stock Exchange companies and a family of mutual funds.

See full Article.