Nachrichten aus der Corporate Governance Szene
We look to the future. Today I would like to take you on a little time travel to the year 2029. Imagine you are reading – as usual – your GermanBoardNews on Friday morning. One article refers to the “GCGS”, the Global Corporate Governance Standard, which was introduced five years ago, in 2024, as a result of a concerted action by the OECD and UN, inspired by the concept of …
Read More
Dear readers of GermanBoardNews, the holiday season was beautiful! And perhaps one or the other of you has actually switched off properly and escaped the news stream. Did you miss anything? I don’t think so. But wait, yes! In the USA, the “shareholder value” concept was abolished in August 2019. We remember the 1960s and the Nobel Prize winner Milton Friedman, who propagated that the only social responsibility of a …
Read More
At the beginning of the school holidays in North Rhine-Westphalia, let us allow ourselves a short break from corporate governance and artificial intelligence. Let’s talk about the people who should shape the future and who bear the responsibility for transformation and corporate culture. In other words, let’s talk about the human side of supervisory boards and boards of directors. Let’s talk about personal governance. An article in the world has …
Read More
There is a lot of talk about the competencies of supervisory boards – and lately, it seems to me, especially often. Numerous experts (especially those who have never worked in a supervisory board themselves) give good advice. Matrix tables are propagated and companies should make ‘transparent’ (= public) what the ‘mix’ of the supervisory board looks like. Is this perhaps the next playing field for the Government Commission on the …
Read More
The new Corporate Governance Code of our Belgian neighbours shows how it works: short, concise, to the point – ten principles and a manual point the way. There you go. So I ask myself: Why can’t we do something like this in Germany? There are several other contemporary examples from more recent times. There’s a lot going on internationally. And the German (“dual”) system of corporate governance is a model …
Read More
Finally the waiting is over. The so-called government commission passed the draft of a new code a week ago – and put it in the drawer for the time being. Now everyone is waiting for the adoption of ARUG II, and only then will the draft code – adapted to the law – be submitted to the new Federal Minister of Justice (perhaps it will also – at least temporarily …
Read More
The day for which the Government Commission on the German Corporate Governance Code has eagerly awaited has arrived: Today, Friday, the Federal Council is dealing with the new ARUG II shareholder rights directive, which nobody really loves. And although the Bundestag’s Legal Affairs Committee scheduled a public hearing on the same subject on 5 June, the Government Commission now wants to conclude the Code Reform: Commission President Rolf Nonnenmacher scheduled …
Read More
The Deutsche-Bank supervisory board Stefan Simon last week took the side of the code critics: the “harsh criticism” of the government commission’s reform proposal is “justified” in many respects, he wrote in a commentary for the Handelsblatt. At the same time, he warned against efforts “now to bury the Code and the Commission”. This would “throw out the baby with the bath water”, fears Simon, who also sees the Code …
Read More
The AGM season is picking up speed, and after Easter it will be really exciting: Bayer is set to hold a particularly turbulent Annual General Meeting on April 26, followed by further exciting shareholder meetings at high speed – for example at RWE, Bilfinger, Volkswagen, BMW, Daimler and Deutsche Bank. At the same time, two reforms are making progress: the new Shareholders’ Rights Directive (ARUG II) must be implemented in …
Read More
The AGM season has begun and discussions about supervisory boards are intensifying again: Shareholders question the competence of candidates, insist on more independence and criticize high bonuses. So there won’t be any misunderstandings: I think the debates are right and important, and we supervisory boards should face them. What is sometimes forgotten in the face of loud criticism, however, is that a large proportion of the supervisory board members are …
Read More
The Association of Supervisory Boards in Germany (VARD) is celebrating its 7th birthday this Friday. And the current debate on the reform of the Code shows impressively that the foundation was – and remains – an important step. For in terms of corporate governance (despite gratifying progress in professionalizing the supervisory boards) there is still a lot of trouble. And some things are currently developing in the wrong direction. I …
Read More
I don’t always agree with Manuel René Theisen. But when I read his latest column I inevitably nodded. Theisen states that “hardly any trace elements of the original approach of the code reform are still recognizable in the draft of the government commission”. The “resuscitation” of the Code must therefore be regarded as a failure. His conclusion, however, is, in my opinion, dangerous. “Let us have the courage and let …
Read More