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Jul 24, 2023

Board refreshment: Finding the right directors to move forward

Corporate Secretary’s ‘Board refreshment: Finding the right directors to move forward’ presents the findings from exclusive research conducted among governance professionals such as general counsel, corporate secretaries and their teams. The report provides helpful insights into, among other things, how candidates are identified, what characteristics are taken into account in recruitment and whether boards are building a pipeline of potential directors. The findings in this report are based on an online survey conducted between December 2022 and March 2023.

 

Click to read CS Board Refreshment

 

Key findings

  • More than four in 10 respondents (44 percent) say their main board discusses refreshment on an ad hoc basis. Almost three in 10 (29 percent) say those discussions happen once a year. Just 6 percent say they take place at every meeting.
  • Eighty percent of respondents in Europe say their board uses an executive search firm to identify potential director candidates, compared with 66 percent of those in North America.
  • Overall, slightly more than half (54 percent) of respondents say their board has a pipeline of potential director candidates.
  • When asked which factors their board includes in its considerations while recruiting new directors, respondents’ most common answer is gender (mentioned by 87 percent) followed by relevant experience from an industry other than the company’s (80 percent).
  • Around two thirds of respondents at small caps (63 percent) and large caps (64 percent) say their firm’s proxy statement uses a board matrix, while 76 percent of those at mega-caps and 81 percent of those at mid-caps say likewise.

 

Click here to download the report >>