Get on board

New Year’s resolution? Forget the latest health fads, writing your autobiography, buying a Harley, hiking to the top of Kilimanjaro, or reading Anna Karenina: Martha Lane-Fox, founder of Last Minute and columnist for The Times, suggests becoming a non-executive director. Yes, this week she appeals to all the experienced execs out there with an invitation to become a NED.

Boards, she writes, are a “fundamental part of all aspects of society”. Couldn’t agree more and as a New Year’s resolution it certainly beats Dry January and learning to unicycle. Though, in truth, our one big resolution is pay the electricity bill. After we’ve done that, we’ll get round to joining a board. Headhunters, you know where to find me.

Shock to the system

What’s the use of corporate governance? Well, a computer program struggled to find one.

A group of profs fed a load of governance provisions into a “machine learning algorithm” and asked what impact these had on company performance. No doubt after a lot of whirring, sparks, a bit of smoke and a few people in white coats looking alarmed, the machine decided corporate governance was no use in predicting whether a firm would do well or not. Douglas Adams couldn’t have written it better.

“Our results suggest that there is little or no support for the existence of strong causal relations between corporate governance—as typically measured—and firm outcomes,” the profs conclude. Which is exactly what all the CEOs want to hear. Goodbye non-execs, it’s been nice knowing you.

Sex and sustainability

Speaking of boards, professional services firm EY says 32% of financial services firms in Europe now have a board director with professional sustainability experience, up markedly on the 19% in the middle of last year. This also comes as women increase their membership of financial services boards from 37% to 42%. Sustainability directors are more likely to be women, EY says.

Omar Ali, managing partner for EY’s EMEIA Financial Services, comments: “Across Europe, boards and company management are taking clear steps to increase diversity across a range of measures. Achieving greater gender balance and ensuring that boardrooms reflect the diversity of the customers and societies they serve is a work in progress, but leaders across the financial sector are driving change.”

Vive la différence

Here’s another interesting snippet about gender diversity. Research looking at French companies found that audit engagement partners are more likely to be gender diverse if the audit committee they report to is also gender diverse.

The profs at Le Man University write: “Appointing female directors as independent and as audit committee members is important as it likely to promote gender diversity in the audit industry, which is still much affected by gender discrimination at the partnership level.”