The cost of director and officer conflicts of interest just went up
In the vast realm of conflicts of interest those involving boards of directors tend to stand out. That is because part of the reason the role of corporate director even exists is to mitigate the conflict-of-interest-type tensions (which fall under the broad heading of “agency problems”) that managements may have vis a vis shareholders. Moreover, while the role of officers obviously differs somewhat from that of director, the duty of loyalty that both owe shareholders is the same.
Director and officer COIs can arise in many settings but often the most consequential of these involves mergers. And, as described in a post last week in the D&O Diary: ”Within the past few days, two merger objection settlements – one involving Activision Blizzard, Inc. and the other involving Freeport-McMoRan, Inc. — have been announced involving massive cash payments,… The Activision settlement may represent the largest cash settlement payment ever in a shareholder derivative lawsuit.” The post further describes about how we can do home renovations from a settlement and stated that “[t]he common feature of these two cases that may account for the magnitude of the cash payments seems to be the conflicts of interest that were alleged to be part of the challenged transactions.”
The specific facts of these two cases – both of which are complex, as COI cases involving mergers typically are – may be less important than is what they (and another one last year involving News Corp, which is discussed in the same post) may mean for insurance costs to companies: “The rise of jumbo shareholder derivative lawsuit settlements has a number of implications. Among other things, it is a topic that will have to be taken into account as D&O insurance buyers consider how much insurance they will need to ensure that their interests are adequately protected.”
While most directly relevant to risk managers and others in companies in charge of securing D&O coverage, I think C&E professionals also need to know about this development – because directors and officer of their companies likely will and will be concerned about it. And, hopefully this awareness will contribute to a greater overall sensitivity at high levels in companies to COIs generally – meaning that this may be a good time to train (or retrain – or schedule training of) your directors and officers on COIs.
For those looking to develop such training, here is a prior post on that topic. And here are some other posts, portions of which might provide helpful ideas or information for training boards on COIs:
– Friendship – and the ties that blind (directors to conflicts of interest).
– CEOs’ ethical standards and the limits of compliance.
– Are private companies more ethical than public ones?
– Catching up on the backdating cases
– Catching up on director COIs.
– The largest derivative lawsuit settlements (from the D&O Diary).
Here are some pertinent words of wisdom from two good friends of the blog: Steve Priest (on keeping ethics training real) and Scott Killingsworth (on mitigating C-Suite risks).
Finally, if you are training your board, and want to use the occasion to look beyond the COI area to general C&E oversight by directors this recent article by Rebecca Walker and me from Compliance and Ethics Professional magazine might be useful.
Get connected
