“We’re interested in whether any company has experience of an executive director having been appointed to more than one non-executive directorship of a FTSE company or equivalent – and whether the experience of members is that multiple appointments among executive directors is relatively rare, as recent research suggests.
What has the response of investors been to such multiple appointments and how has the communication of such appointments been handled?
Are there any suggestions as to how this should be addressed with the investor community, particularly in cases where the non-executive appointment is to a company which is not strictly caught by the recommendations of the UK Corporate Governance Code?”
Our policy is the same as everyone else’s seems to be – that our Executive Directors may only hold one other non executive position with a listed company – but they are actively encouraged to hold an outside board position to help with breadth of perspective and better understanding of board dynamics in a different environment.
Our NEDs hold multiple positions, but all within the Code recommendations.
If for business reasons it was thought (a) desirable, and (b) feasible within time constraints for any of our EDs to hold more than one listed NED position, it would be a case of explaining the business reason very clearly as I suspect the voting organisations would otherwise red or amber top the AGM voting report in relation to Board re-election votes.
Executive directors are permitted to hold one non-executive director position only so we too have no experience of multiple appointments.
Executive directors are permitted to hold one non-executive director position only so we too have no experience of multiple appointments.
Our policy is to allow one external NEDship. None of our EDs have any at the moment, and probably havent the time – certainly not to hold more than one.
We consider it beneficial for the executive directors to hold an external directorship.
Whilst we would normally limit to one, one of the directors has 2 directorships,one UK and one US, which we consider, given the importance of the US to our business to be of benefit in terms of market awareness.
It is a fine balance of course.
It has never been an issue for us. Some of our executive directors have been/are NEDs for one other company only. Frankly, I don’t think they would have time for more.
Our policy is the same as others-one NED-ship allowed.
In reality I think it would be very difficult for a full time ED to carry out more than one NED role. My experience of having EDs sitting as NEDs on boards I have been associated with has indicated they have much less diary flexibility (an important issue if a major transaction is underway) and less time to be able to devote to duties outside scheduled board/committee meetings (eg being able to participate in visits to different parts of the business)
Our policy is to only allow an executive director to hold one approved non-executive director position, so we have no experience of multiple appointments.
Recently listed we have new non-executive directors, and existing, who are non-executive directors on other FTSE Boards.
I am not aware that investors made a big point about this when presented to prior to investment.
Agree this is rare. In my company we had one instance of this where an ED was a NED on 2 outside entites – no issues arose and we merely disclosed fees retained by the ED in the Annual Report.
Privately we discouraged this but it was an accident of history – the ED in question was a merchant banker by background and therefore sought after for advice. In practice also the time commitment was not huge so did not conflict with his duties as an executive.
We have no experience of executive directors having more that one non-executive directorship as we have had a policy in place for a number of years that an executive director may only have on such appointment.