Has there ever been a better time to be a general counsel to a UK plc? Recent highly-publicised corporate failures in the US and Europe have raised the corporate governance expectations of investors in listed companies and politicians, and with this has emerged a greater appreciation of the value of checks and balances around executive management.
Much emphasis has been placed upon bringing about the appointment and effective performance of a majority of independent directors to company boards – a new feature in the US where the ‘CEO-dominant paradigm’ held sway for many years, but settled practice in the UK under the Combined Code.
