Grant Thornton LLP recently published its annual International Business Report (the Report). The Report, which aims to chart appetite for M&A around the world, is based on interviews with more than 12,500 chief executive officers, managing directors, chairmen and other senior decision-makers across all sectors. The Report's findings, while varied, all point to the importance of M&A activity as a driving force for growth, as there was a clear acknowledgement from those surveyed that acquisitions are needed if business hope to grow.
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Corporations are convinced that the composition of their shareholders has a significant, if difficult to quantify, impact on both the company's and the stock price's long-term performance. A survey conducted by the National Investor Relations Institute (NIRI) and Stanford University found that 91 percent of public companies discuss shareholder composition at the executive level, and 75 percent at the board level, while CEOs spend an incredible 4.2 days per quarter 'managing' their shareholder base. But for all this effort, Stanford University professors Anne Beyer and David Larcker and researcher Brian Tayan don't see any proof that shareholder composition even matters.
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I was thinking of asking Gregory Maffei to join my board of directors, but I'm afraid he might say yes. Maffei is the highly-regarded chief executive of Liberty Media Corporation, a publicly traded media and entertainment conglomerate that owns interests in companies including Viacom , Time Warner, and the Atlanta Braves. As one would imagine, such an exalted position in today's corporate world is nothing short of all-encompassing.
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Regulators, proxy advisors and investors may be way off the mark in their views on executive compensation.
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A board that is more diverse can help a company avoid risky projects and leads to greater dividends for shareholders.
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Activist shareholders are increasingly targeting mid-sized companies as investor disruption looks set to reach record levels in 2014, law firm Linklaters LLP said in a report today.
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Unlike the public service arena in which lawmakers routinely talk to constituents, directors at publicly held companies regularly balk at meeting with investors. And it doesn't matter if you hold enough shares to be a threat to the share price if you decide to sell. The bottom line is "within the clubby world of directors, communicating with shareholders, big or small, is overtly frowned upon," says The New York Times' Dealbook.
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Corporate boards with greater gender diversity function better, and it takes just one woman to make a difference. While earlier research suggested that it takes a few women in the boardroom to move the needle, a new study shows that even the presence of a single female board member has a positive impact, especially in male-dominated industries.
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