Good Governance: Addressing Board Structure, Composition, Leadership and Performance

“Global market forces will sort out those companies
that do not have sound corporate governance.”

— Mervyn King

Course Overview

Numerous studies have shown the correlation of good governance with better decision-making, stronger financial performance and more effective risk management and sustainability practices. The role of governance, along with good ownership, leadership, management, succession and strategy, can be essential to the long-term health and prosperity of legacy families. This extends to their various family and philanthropic activities, their businesses, and other commercial and non-commercial initiatives around the world.

Good governance in the greater family enterprise addresses those structures, policies and practices that have proven successful in the past, and ensures they evolve to stay relevant and effective in the future as well. This will benefit from a focused effort to set out the purpose of a board and its related activities, define its structure and operations, provide guidance to its leadership and put in place an approach to objective review and constant performance improvement.

In a legacy family and its businesses, good governance, especially if including experienced, powerful and independent-minded non-family members, can act as a substitute for some of the disciplines of exposure to public capital markets and public market governance.

One of the key benefits of good governance is an effective program of risk management. Many historical family and family business disasters could have been avoided through better board oversight and timely action.

But good governance is all about opportunity as well as risk – finding and exploiting areas of potentially deep and lasting positive impact on the family.