Words .....that work

It is all now getting personal.

Some progress is being made in making it more difficult to absolve oneself of personal responsibility while doing an 'office job.' And it's about time - because you're expected to be personally responsible when you do other jobs, from driving a school bus (carefully and responsibly), to selling vegetables (fresh, clean, priced right), to working on a building site (so much room for disaster).

You are expected to be persona...

Gerhard Roggemann has a lot of experience of boardrooms - in the UK and Europe.

If you click on the link above you will find his Bloomberg Business Profile. It also helpfully tells you "This person is connected to 89 board members in 7 different organizations across 15 diff...

It is the kind of week when I am going to be playing 'catch-up' for awhile, so bear with me.

I had my hand up for a question at the #FemaleFTSE event when the Cranfield School of Management  revealed its latest bombshell findings on the stalling of progress in appointing women to boardrooms of Uk plc.

Only a man asked it instead - well, he used a question to take five minutes to ma...

Has the world started a better place after the Easter break ? Marginally so, perhaps, maybe...at least judging by the quality of 'intent'.

I'm excited to find the #integritymatters on the CISI website - Chartered Institute For Securities & Investment. If you are a would-be broker or trader in the capital markets, you now need to pass an ethics test before you are allo...

After all the fuss about the arrival of the UK's Bribery Act, it seems there has been a serious case of anti-climax. It is being ignored by too many companies for comfort.

Research by the fraud investigation & dispute services team at Ernst & Young released today reveals nearly half (48%) of British firms surveyed were failing to vet their suppliers for compliance with the  Bribery Act, and that only 6% would re-tender if they discovered their suppliers were not...

Sunday evenings are a good time to dream of changing the world - it's Monday morning, back to the nitty gritty on boardrooms and their workings...

The FT's Jonathan Ford beat me to it, can't compete with that - if you have access to FT.com, read the link. It calls for an inquiry into the spectacular goings-on at Nat Rotschild's brainchild, the miner Bumi plc i...

First, two caveats - I am no fan of overpaid bankers, and experience suggests it is very hard to take what anyone in the financial services industry says without having a lot of salt to hand. 

Most people who read this will have seen senior bankers in front of the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards, even if it is only clips of it on the evening news. While it's going on, and after it's over, there's a lot of media activity - information, analysis, spec...

Is anyone in the UK's businesses listening and does anyone care ? Not much, apparently.

The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) has a Quarterly Employee Outlook Survey just out which finds things are in a sorry state. 

It tabulates an 'employee ...

Is anyone else surprised by the fact that 'risk' committees are still scarce on the ground in most European boardrooms? A report quoted here earlier on `Non Executive directors in Europe' by management consultancy Hay Group  says "the prevalence of a committee covering risk (as opposed to nomination, remcom or audit)  is much lower across Europe at 19% overall."

Well, I'm not surprised, I'm shock...

We may be making some progress appointing more women to boards of plcs across Europe, but - surprise, surprise - we are not paying them as much as men. This is partly because women are still not being appointed to the "top-paying, strategically important committee roles" and "barely two per cent" (in case you missed that, 2%) of non-executive chairs across Europe are held by women.

There is an 'actual pay gap' of 9% between male and female board members in Europe 2012...