What we also discovered in putting the list together was that in some instances, it became impossible to separate the captain from the team. This year’s D100 is a case in point: Our editors and board of advisors were nearly unanimous in our selection of President Barack Obama as this year’s most powerful corporate governance influence. And yet, to do justice to the seismic shift his policies have brought about in the boardroom, we also had to recognize the many other  “New Voices” in the Administration who are now leading the greatest financial reform of American business since the 1930s.

So, we ask that in the pages ahead you pay more attention to who counts, and less to how we count, in arriving at our final selection of individuals and institutions that have met the requirement to be “most influential.” We think you’ll agree it’s an intricate and impressive mosaic where the whole equals much more than the sum of its parts, which may or may not be greater than 100.

Regulators & Rulemakers

Team Obama
It is often written that reasonable people may disagree, and with Americans and their Presidents, it is practically a way of life. But even an unreasonable person could only conclude that this President and his Administration are having a profound and lasting influence over the boardroom. President Barack Obama has demonstrated an enormous capacity for calm in uncertain times. His relative youth leads to frequent comparisons to John F. Kennedy and his communications skills to those of Ronald Reagan. But it is his aggressive response to the unparalleled economic challenges that greeted him at the dawn of his young presidency that harkens back to an earlier figure of towering influence,  Franklin D. Roosevelt.

FDR’s massive social and financial reform programs—the creation of Social Security as part of the New Deal, the establishment of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Federal Deposit Insurance Company (FDIC)—helped restore confidence in the nation’s banking system coming out of the Great Depression. One could plausibly take major portions of FDR’s New Deal and substitute his name with President Obama’s.  The implementation of the $787-billion American Economic Recovery Act one month after Obama took office, coupled with his handling of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), which sought to strengthen the financial sector by buying up the assets and equity from troubled banks, has clearly helped the nation avoid further financial disaster and put the economy on the path to recovery.

And finally, turning again to the FDR playbook, Obama assembled a team of wise men and women, formidable economic and business minds, whose decisions are having a lasting effect on the role of the corporate director. Preeminent among them was the choice of Rahm Emanuel as chief of staff. Described as a veritable “influence machine,” within the Administration and Congress, the former Congressman from Obama’s home state of Illinois is known as a hard-charging, brutally candid, sometimes combative, acutely intelligent man who can get things done and knows the ways of the Capitol and the boardroom.

The Enforcers
Perhaps second only to Obama in terms of her influence on boards and corporate governance, career regulator Mary Schapiro heads up the 75-year-old SEC. Before the crisis, the agency’s very existence was in question: “Obsolete,” “out of touch,” and “behind the times” were just some of the many terms uttered by detractors. The Commission, under former chairman Christopher Cox, was pilloried for missing the Madoff scandal.

As former SEC chairman and Directorship 100 Hall of Famer, Arthur Levitt described her: “She has the skills, the intellect, and the character to be a superb SEC chair.” But Schapiro will face a new kind of challenge in the role, not just that of proving her own qualifications, but also instituting a significant remodeling of the SEC itself, as she works to bring it into the new regulatory era.

Moving swiftly to address regulatory concerns in the wake of the financial crisis, the SEC has rolled out a series of proposals that could embody the biggest change to the rules of the game for directors in some time. Schapiro, who is no stranger to the boardroom, having served on the boards of Duke Energy and Kraft Foods, has overseen proposed rule changes on proxy access, broker voting, say on pay, and new requirements for disclosure on executive compensation and director qualifications. It’s now up to her and fellow commissioners Kathleen Casey, Elisse Walter, Luis Aguilar, and Troy Paredes to determine the final regulations that emerge from the proposals.

Other key players Schapiro has brought into the SEC include Senior Advisor Kayla Gillan, Chief Accountant James Kroeker, and Director of Enforcement Robert Khuzami. Gillan was a founding board member of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) and former general counsel to CalPERS. Kroeker joined the SEC as deputy chief accountant in 2007 from Deloitte and Touche where he had been a partner in the firm’s national accounting services group. Kroeker recently said that the proposed road map for the convergence of International Financial Reporting Standards,pushed to the back burner amid the larger issues of market reform, would be restored as another top priority. Khuzami is a former federal prosecutor, has pledged to improve the SEC’s enforcement performance by creating specialized units to provide “structure and resources for staff to ‘get smart’ about certain products, markets, regulatory regimes, practices and transactions.”

TARP Overseers
Another example of Obama’s preference for brains over politics was his reappointment of Sheila Bair to chair the FDIC. Another fiscally conservative Republican, on Bair’s watch alone this year, 94 banks have failed, creating a new challenge:  how to replenish the fund. Bair has also been an integral part of the team overseeing TARP. Neil Barofsky is a former New York assistant attorney general confirmed by the Senate in December as special inspector general. Dubbed the “TARP Cop,” his job is to figure out how and where the $700-billion TARP funds are spent, reporting directly to the President and providing updates to the Congressional Oversight Panel chaired by bankruptcy expert and Harvard Law School professor, Elizabeth Warren. COP’s first report, released in February, casti-  gated then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson for his performance and lack of transparency, reporting that the Treasury Department  had overpaid by $78 billion for the assets it bought from banks.

Interestingly, while Obama sponsored and was a strong proponent of  “say on pay” legislation while a senator, since appointing Kenneth Feinberg special master of compensation, he has appeared unwilling to make the issue a top priority. Feinberg, who has immersed himself in some of the country’s most troublesome and high-profile cases, is considered a superb choice, both in terms of skill and temperament, by Capitol Hill insiders. His most noteworthy case was the 33 months of pro-bono work he did following the 2001 terrorist attacks to determine how much each victim would receive from the federal government’s September 11th Victim Compensation Fund.

Feinberg may in fact be perfectly suited for a job that most compensation specialists see as thankless, and possibly as a “no win” situation. As the Obama Administration’s comp expert, Feinberg was called on to monitor the compensation of executives in what were once some of America’s most prestigious corporations, now TARP recipients, including American International Group (AIG), Bank of America, Citibank, Chrysler, GMAC, and General Motors.

Fed to the Rescue
To prevent American capitalism from spiraling deeper into the abyss, nine months after President Obama made his first Cabinet announcement, he re-nominated Ben Bernanke as Federal Reserve chairman. The former Princeton economics professor was selected by Bush in 2005 to succeed Alan Greenspan. In 2008 after the market crashed, Bernanke invoked emergency powers, slashed interest rates, and spent trillions of dollars to right the financial system. Just last month, he declared the recession “likely over.” Though he seldom gives interviews, Bernanke is never far from the public eye and has been a stalwart in the transition between presidential administrations and in the effort to stem the economic slide.

When then President-elect Obama named his economics team, it included players who, like Bernanke, were already steeped in the crisis details, demonstrated a studied understanding of Depression-era economics, or some combination of both. Enter Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Chief White House Economic Advisor Lawrence H. Summers. Geithner, who is currently pushing legislation to provide more systematic regulation of financial institutions, including new limits on executive compensation, recently told one interviewer that he is optimistic major reforms will be passed.

Prior to his appointment replacing Henry Paulson, Geithner was president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and part of the team central to the critical negotiations that resulted in Bear Stearns being tucked into JPMorgan Chase, Merrill Lynch going to Bank of America, Lehman Bros. disappearing, and Citigroup and other struggling banks getting a lifeline.

Summers, the former Harvard University economist who became its president following his tenure as Treasury Secretary to President Clinton, is director of the Cabinet’s National Economic Council. The group was established in 1993 to coordinate and ensure that the President’s economic policy agenda is carried out.

Rounding out the team, Paul Volcker, the former Fed chief under Clinton, was selected to chair the president’s economic recovery advisory board. And Christina Romer, a former UC Berkeley economist, who administration sources suggest is well- regarded by both parties, chairs the Council of Economic Advisers. Her appointment was seen as a further triumph of brain over politics in Obama’s approach to talent recruitment.

In Georgia, executive pay for senior executive rose three percent in 2008 to $1.88 million, according to an Atlanta Journal-Constitution analysis of pay packages of more than 100 executives at Georgia’s 20 largest publicly owned companies.

The increase came in a year when 13 of the 20 companies saw their net income fall, and 17 saw the price of their stock drop. About a third of the executives studied did not receive performance-based short-term bonus or incentive payments in 2008, the SEC filings showed. That was nearly three times as many as missed such payments, made for meeting financial goals, in 2007.

Neville Isdell, former Coca-Cola chairman and CEO, ranked first in the AJC survey with a pay package valued at $23.1 million, up 7 percent from the year before. Still, critics of executive pay and increased shareholder activism are expected to reform the system, possibly leading to a drop in these numbers.

In order to effectively react to a crisis, boards and management need to be able to respond quickly to changing circumstances, while avoiding hasty (and perhaps ill-advised) decision-making. Boards can act with foresight and business acumen only if and when they are continuously involved in the development of long-term strategy.

According to a report of the National Association of Corporate Directors’ Blue Ribbon Commission, a board must be constructively engaged with management in “establishing an overall destination, and making provisions for frequent mid-course correction. Strategy involves perpetual redefinition—internally for strengths and weaknesses, and externally for opportunities and threats, focusing intently on competition. It measures and re-measures the gap between aspiration and capability, makes plans to bridge that divide, and ultimately audits the accomplishment of those plans.”

A board deeply involved in developing strategy with management will have a deeper and more nuanced understanding of the company’s business and its strategic environment. “Their expanded knowledge [will] better prepare them to contribute to future strategic discussions and decisions,” including evaluating responses to rapidly changing conditions, writes David A. Nadler, vice chairman of Marsh & McLennan Cos. in the journal Strategy & Leadership. When a crisis hits, a board engaged in corporate strategy will be better able to stay focused on long-term prospects amid the tumult. The board will be sufficiently familiar with the company’s resources and competitors to effectively evaluate responses to the crisis on both a short-term and a long-term basis or to rethink the strategy entirely.

Of course, it is not enough to merely involve the board in the development of corporate strategy. Developing corporate strategy is a dynamic and complex endeavor, as companies face changing business conditions and assess whether current strategies are producing the intended results. Large public companies will typically have a senior officer in charge of corporate strategy, supported by a staff and consultants drawing on multiple disciplines and specialized expertise. Lacking these resources in most cases, independent directors face significant challenges if they are to contribute to strategy development. While management focuses on strategy every day, the boards of many companies are limited to providing input into this complex process during quarterly or annual sessions. Officers may evaluate outcomes and adjust aspects of strategy on a real-time basis; directors typically wait until their next meeting, when they may receive an update from management. While the board may bear responsibility for the oversight of strategy, the resources required to make ongoing, substantive contributions are often inadequate or unavailable.

While daunting, it is not impossible for board leaders to successfully engage their board colleagues in the ongoing development, refinement and, if necessary, redefinition of corporate strategy. In the process, they will develop a more deliberative approach to strategic thinking, which not only can prepare them for future crises, but also will provide them with a better overall understanding of the business, which can add value in calmer times.

“These mind-numbing presentations [by management] have to go. They need to be replaced by animated, relevant, focused, easy-to-comprehend presentations that zero in on the issues that the directors need to know.”

- Paul Brountas, author

A recent meeting of the Lead Director Network brought together lead directors, presiding directors, and non-executive chairs from major companies, including Caterpillar, Coca-Cola, Delta Air Lines, Eli Lilly, General Mills, Home Depot, Microsoft, and Morgan Stanley. Members suggested six steps that board leaders can take to enhance and improve their board’s contributions to corporate strategy.

1. Ensure that the board is receiving adequate information. For the board to have effective input into decisions about corporate strategy, directors must have comprehensive information, especially about assumptions underlying the strategy, alternatives that may have been considered, and risks that may jeopardize the success of a strategy. A recent study concluded that most of the information received by boards from management concern financial data and measures, not relevant strategic information. Board members said they receive only a moderate amount of information related to strategic information such as external environment assessments, internal resource analyses, business entry and exit data, and risk analyses.

Lead directors should take steps to ensure that meaningful strategic information is being provided to the board. As one member of the Lead Director Network noted, “I have to ensure that the right flow of information is getting to the board to help directors understand why management is taking a particular course.” This is particularly important for new board members or a board just beginning to enhance their participation in corporate strategy. The ramp-up time may be significant as the board digests all the information, but learning about the company and its strategic environment will enable the board and the management team to be responsive and enhance value in times of hardship or calm.

2. Provide for continuous board involvement. Lead directors should work to involve their boards in corporate strategy in an ongoing way, shifting from a model of periodic management reporting to a model in which management and the board collaborate in developing and monitoring corporate strategy. Paul Brountas, author of the book Boardroom Excellence, notes in an article in Strategy & Leadership, “Strategy work is an iterative process, not a big-bang event. Yet, often [companies] treat it as though it were a one-time event by scheduling the board’s strategy meeting or making strategy the key agenda item at the annual board retreat. Absent a rich context, directors are hard pressed to contribute effectively.”

Lead directors should include a “strategy update” in agendas for regular board meetings, provide the board with relevant background information prior to meetings, and build a robust dialogue between the board and the CEO regarding strategy at the meeting. A one-sided advocacy presentation on strategy by management, with no board interaction, won’t suffice. Noted Brountas, “These mind-numbing presentations [by management] have to go. They need to be replaced by animated, relevant, focused, easy-to comprehend presentations that zero in on the issues that the directors need to know to perform their oversight function effectively and assist management in achieving the objectives and strategies jointly established by the board and management.”

3. Improve the quality of board discussions about corporate strategy. As one Lead Director Network member noted, “We have to guard against getting too tactical. I have to go to other directors and say, ‘No, we’re high level, and management is responsible for the tactical things.’” Another member agreed: “As lead director, you have to understand when a particular issue goes from a micro to a macro level.” Lead directors should engage the board in challenging management, when appropriate, on strategic issues. Directors are sometimes reluctant to openly debate management and a lead director may need to encourage board members to speak up on important issues.

Lead directors should engage the board in challenging management, when appropriate, on strategic issues. Directors are sometimes reluctant to openly debate management.

4. Use executive sessions for discussions of corporate strategy. As chairs for executive sessions of independent directors, lead directors should ensure that these sessions include candid discussion of strategic choices, constructive feedback for management, and a consensus on decisions about corporate strategy. If the board has not reached consensus on a particular issue, it will have difficulty helping shape management’s thinking about the issue. Said one Lead Director Network member, “The dialogue continues until you reach an agreement. You may have to make it clear to management that they haven’t made their case yet, and they need to come back to the board with a better business case.”

5. Provide guidance and feedback to the CEO. The lead director of the board serves as a liaison between the board and the CEO. Lead directors may help the CEO prepare for a board discussion of strategy by previewing questions and concerns. They can follow up from board meetings and executive sessions by communicating to the CEO the sentiments and reactions of the directors.

According to a recent survey conducted by NACD, CEOs ranked board participation in strategic planning as the second-highest priority for their boards, but the surveyed CEOs gave their directors only the 11th-highest score in rating their effectiveness in this endeavor. One Lead Director Network member offered a potential explanation: “As a CEO, you have some board members who are focused on strategic questions. You can also have other board members who don’t add as much value. Sometimes, a few board members color how [the CEO] views the whole board.” A lead director can help focus the CEO’s interaction with the board in a constructive, positive manner, and elevate the CEO’s evaluation of the effectiveness of the board’s engagement. By keeping the discussions sufficiently macro-level and focused, and communicating clearly with management, the lead director can develop an effective, collaborative relationship about corporate strategy, rather than a combative one.

6. Ensure that the composition of the board facilitates contributions to strategy. While not every director must be a “strategic thinker,” having the right combination of skills and backgrounds will allow the board to have effective input into corporate strategy. A recent commentary in The McKinsey Quarterly advises that on a board of a dozen directors, “a litmus test of strategic energy is the presence of at least three or four members who have deep industry expertise in the core business and market conditions the company faces . . . [Boards] should now ensure that their ranks include directors with the industry knowledge crucial to the primary business of their companies. Once that expertise is in place, other board members can be screened for deep functional or geographic experience.”

By implementing the steps above, lead directors can ensure their boards will collaborate more effectively with management in developing and adjusting corporate strategy. Once a board is substantively involved in an ongoing manner, it can help keep the company focused on long-term growth, during both the calm waters of economic prosperity and the choppy seas of a downturn.

For more on strategy, go to www.directorship.com/strategy.

Michael Egan (megan@kslaw.com) is a partner and Eric Kurtz (ekurtz@kslaw.com) is an associate in the corporate practice group at King & Spalding LLP.  As part of its focus on corporate governance, King & Spalding, with Tapestry Networks, created the Lead Director Network, a group of lead directors, presiding directors, and non-executive chairs from many leading American companies that meets to discuss how to improve the performance of their corporations and earn the trust of their shareholders through more effective board leadership.

The CEO of Coca-Cola Enterprises got a compensation package valued at $11.9 million in 2008, reports AP. John Brock’s 2008 pay is about $1 million less that in 2007.

The company, not immune to the economic fallout of the past year, booked a loss of $4.39 billion and saw its stock fall 53 percent. Shares have falled another 11 percent since the start of the year, closing yesterday at $10.70.

Brock, who runs the biggest Coke bottler, earned $1.1 million in salary and a $147,344 cash bonus. He also got $219,745 in other compensation, which included personal use of the company plane worth $167,603. The company also paid $46,851 to a defined contribution plan for him.

Roger Ailes, Fox News

Sharon Allen, Deloitte & Touche

Herbert M. Allison Jr., Director

Gavin Anderson, GMI

Philip A. Armstrong, GCGF

Norman R. Augustine, Director

Stephen Bainbridge, UCLA

Maria Bartiromo, CNBC

David Batchelder, Relational Investors

Lucian A. Bebchuk, Harvard Law

Irv Becker, Hay Group

Beverly Behan, Hay Group

Richard Bennett, The Corporate Library

Robert S. Bennett, Skadden Arps

Dennis R. Beresford, U. of Georgia

Ethan Berman, RiskMetrics Group

Ben Bernanke, The Federal Reserve

John Biggs, Director

Leon Black, Apollo

Lloyd C. Blankfein, Goldman Sachs

Richard Blumenthal, State of Conn.

Magnus Bocker, Nasdaq OMX

John C. Bogle, Hall of Fame

Richard Breeden, Breeden Partners

Catherine L. Bromilow, PwC

Beth A. Brooke, E&Y

Warren Buffett, Berkshire Hathaway

Peter Butler, Governance for Owners

Marshall Carter, NYSE Euronext

Martha Carter, RiskMetrics Group

John J. Castellani, Business Roundtable

William B. Chandler III, Chancery Court

Ram Charan, Charan Associates

Peter Clapman, Governance for Owners

John C. Coffee, Columbia Law School

Frederic W. Cook, Frederic W. Cook & Co.

J. Michael Cook, Director

Christopher Cox, SEC

Jim Cramer, TheStreet.com

Andrew Cuomo, State of New York

Kenneth Daly, NACD

Julie Hembrock Daum, Spencer Stuart

George L. Davis, Egon Zehnder Intl.

Stephen M. Davis, Millstein Center

James L. Dimon, JPMorgan

Samuel A. DiPiazza, Jr., PwC

Christopher Dodd, U.S. Senate

Amy Domini, Domini Social Investments

William H. Donaldson, Hall of Fame

Thomas J. Donohue, Chamber of Commerce

Ed Durkin, United Brotherhood of Carpenters

Theodore L. Dysart, Heidrick & Struggles

Jay Eisenhofer, Grant & Eisenhofer

Charles Elson, U. of Delaware

John Engler, NAM

Richard Ferlauto, AFSCME

Timothy Flynn, KPMG

Margaret “Peggy” Foran, Sara Lee

Cynthia M. Fornelli, CAQ

Barney Frank, U.S. Congress

William F. Galvin, State of Mass.

William W. George, Harvard Business School

Kayla Gillan, RiskMetrics Group

Robert J. Giuffra, Jr., Sullivan & Cromwell

Scott Goebel, Fidelity

Holly Gregory, Weil, Gotshal & Manges

Robert Greifeld, Nasdaq OMX

Joseph Grundfest, Stanford Law School

Steven Hall, Steven Hall & Partners

Robert Hallagan, Korn/Ferry Intl.

Laurence P. Hazell, Standard & Poor’s

Edward Herlihy, Wachtell Lipton

Robert Herz, FASB

John A. Hill, Putnam

Paul Hodgson, The Corporate Library

Christopher Hohn, TCI

Michele J. Hooper, Director

Anthony J. Horan, JP Morgan

Carl Icahn, Icahn Investments

Ray R. Irani, Occidental Petroleum

Edward Kangas, Director

Adam Kanzer, Domini Social Investments

Henry Keizer, KPMG

Donald Keough, Director

Joe Kernen, CNBC

Richard Ketchum, FINRA

Charles King, Korn/Ferry Intl.

Catherine Kinney, NYSE Euronext

Jannice L. Koors, Pearl Meyer & Partners

Richard H. Koppes, Jones Day

Henry Kravis, KKR

Frederick J. Krebs, ACC

John A. Krol, Director

Robert Kueppers, Deloitte & Touche

Arthur Levitt, Hall of Fame

Martin Lipton, Wachtell Lipton

Jay W. Lorsch, Harvard Business School

Joann Lublin, Wall Street Journal

Steve Mader, Korn/Ferry Intl.

Ken Marzion, CalPERS

Mary Pat McCarthy, KPMG

Bill McCollum, State of Florida

Robert McCormick, Glass Lewis

Blythe J. McGarvie, Director

William McGuinness, Fried Frank

Patrick McGurn, RiskMetrics Group

W. James McNerney, Jr. Boeing

James P. Melican, PGI

Pearl Meyer, Steven Hall & Partners

Bill Miller, Legg Mason

Ira Millstein, Hall of Fame

Nell Minow, The Corporate Library

Robert A.G. Monks, author, Corpocracy

Peter Montagnon, ABI

Gretchen Morgenson, New York Times

Anne Mulcahy, Xerox

Anne Mule, Sunoco

Rupert Murdoch, News Corp.

Alan Murray, Wall Street Journal

Jim Naughton, Corporate Governance Blog

Thomas Neff, Spencer Stuart

Duncan Niederauer, NYSE Euronext

Joseph Nocera, New York Times

Floyd Norris, New York Times

Mark Olson, PCAOB

James Owens, Caterpillar

Michael Oxley, Hall of Fame

William Patterson, CtW

Henry M. Paulson, Jr. U.S. Treasury

Harry Pearce, Director

Harvey L. Pitt, Kalorama Partners

Becky Quick, CNBC

Carl Quintanilla, CNBC

David Rubenstein, Carlyle Group

Paul Sarbanes, Hall of Fame

Charles E. Schumer, U.S. Senate

Stephen A. Schwarzman, Blackstone

Mary Shapiro, FINRA

Damon Silvers, AFL-CIO

David W. Smith, SCSGP

Michael Smith, AIG

Jeffrey A. Sonnenfeld, Yale School of Management

Larry W. Sonsini, Wilson Sonsini

Andrew Ross Sorkin, New York Times

Myron T. Steele, Delaware Supreme Court

Leo E. Strine, Chancery Court

David N. Swinford, Pearl Meyer & Partners

John Thain, Merrill Lynch

Andrew Tuch, Corporate Governance Blog

James S. Turley, E&Y

E. Norman Veasey, Weil Gotshal & Manges

Stephen Wagner, Deloitte & Touche

Carol Ward, Kraft Foods

Henry Waxman, U.S. Congress

Ralph Whitworth, Relational Investors

John Wilcox, TIAA-CREF

Note: More than 100 individuals are named because some listings contain more than one person at the same company or in the same industry.

For the complete 2008 Directorship 100 article, click HERE.

The top 10 companies in order of rank, according to this year’s two-step poll, are:
 

1. Google
2. Johnson & Johnson
3. Intel 
4. General Mills
5. Kraft Foods
6. Berkshire-Hathaway
7. 3M
8. Coca-Cola
9. Honda
10. Microsoft

What does it take to get to the top? Google provides a case in point.

Four years ago, the company was not included among the top 60 most visible companies on the list. But this year, Google rose to No. 1, beating last year’s RQ reputation leader, Microsoft.

Google also beat this year’s second-runner-up, Johnson & Johnson, which was the top ranked company, until last year, since the inception of the survey in 1999.

“What the RQ survey has shown in recent years is that companies that pay attention to enhancing their reputation see bottom line results. The companies with a good reputation have stayed near the top of the list and those with bad reputations have gotten worse,” says Robert Fronk at Harris Interactive. “The survey also provides a roadmap for what areas linked to corporate reputation have the most impact on consumers.”

Harris selected the 60 companies in July and August by asking 7,105 Americans to name two corporations that stood out ifor having very positive or very negative reputations. In February and March, pollsters then asked 20,477 respondents to rate the 60 companies on 20 attributes, including emotional appeal, the quality of their products, and social responsibility.

Ken Powell, chairman and CEO of General Mills, notes, “Reputation can be measured in recognition, employee recruitment and retention, even stock price multiple. But in the end, we believe the most important measure is trust. General Mills values its reputation tremendously, and we constantly strive to remain worthy of the trust of our customers, consumers, employees, investors and communities.”

]]> http://www.directorship.com/google-shines-amid-the-tarnished/feed/ 0 http://www.directorship.com/postings-june--july-2008/ http://www.directorship.com/postings-june--july-2008/#comments Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 Robert Dilenschneider http://www.directorship.com/?p=4105

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General Motors has nominated Coca-Cola CEO E. Neville Isdell to its board. His appointment would be the third addition to the GM board in the past year and will bring the total number of directors to 14. Isdell is expected to retire this summer as CEO of Coca-Cola.

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Actel appointed John McGrath, former CFO of Network Equipment Technologies, to its board. He also serves on the board of Endwave.

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Karl Steiner AG, a Swiss real estate group, named Peter Wuffli to its board of directors. Wuffli is the former chief executive of UBS.

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Wal-Mart nominated Gregory B. Penner, a general partner at investment management firm Madrone Capital Partners, and Arne M. Sorenson, CFO of Marriott International, to its board. Penner previously served as Wal-Mart’s CFO in Japan. Current Wal-Mart board members Jack Shewmaker and Roland Hernandez will not stand for re-election at the company’s annual meeting in June.

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Sunoco appointed Gary W. Edwards to its board. Edwards became an energy consultant once he retired from Conoco in 2001, after a 38-year career. He is also a director at Entergy and Sunoco Partners.

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Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide named Thomas E. Clarke to its board of directors. Clarke, president of new-business ventures for Nike, was also appointed to the company’s audit committee and capital committee.

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Erik Blachford, former CEO and president of Expedia and IAC/ InterActiveCorp’s travel division, IAC Travel, joined the board of PickPackGo, a San Franciscobased online search site. Blachford, currently CEO of TerraPass, also serves on the boards of TerraPass, Zillow, and Surfparks.

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The Associated Press elected three new members to its board: Samuel Zell, chairman and CEO of the Tribune Co.; Donna J. Barrett, president and CEO of Community Newspaper Holdings; and Craig A. Dubow, chairman, president and CEO of Gannett Co. Also, Douglas H. McCorkindale and Jay Smith will both retire. News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch will fill the vacancy created by Smith’s retirement until the next election of directors.

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E*Trade Financial Corp. elected Frederick W. Kanner, a partner at the law firm of Dewey & LeBoeuf in New York City, to its board. Kanner will serve on the board’s finance and risk oversight committee as well as the nominating and corporate governance committee.

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CA named Arthur F. Weinbach to its board and to serve on its compensation and human resources committee. Weinbach currently serves as executive chairman of Broadridge Financial Solutions. Previously, he was with Automatic Data Processing for 28 years.

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Appointed to the board of Harrah’s Entertainment were Charles Atwood, Christopher Williams, Jeanne Jackson, and Lynn Swann. Atwood has been vice chairman of the Las Vegasbased casino operator since 2006. Williams is chairman and chief executive of Williams Capital Group and Williams Capital Management. Jackson, founder and CEO of MSP Capital, is a former CEO of Walmart.com. Pro football Hall-of-Famer Swann runs a marketing and consulting firm and is the managing director of Diamond Edge Capital Partners.

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Former Quebec Premier Daniel Johnson was appointed to the Bank of Canada’s board. Johnson, a lawyer with McCarthy Tetrault in Montreal, also is a director of Bombardier and IGM Financial. The Bank of Canada’s 12 directors, appointed from outside the federal government, serve three-year terms.

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Michael Sheehan, CEO of Boston-based Hill, Holliday, Connors, Cosmopulos, owned by the Interpublic Group of Companies, was named to the board of directors of BJ’s Wholesale Club.

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Choice Hotels International named Stephen P. Joyce to its board and to the dual roles of president and COO. Joyce spent his career at Marriott International, where he most recently served as executive vice president, global development/ owner and franchise services.

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Monsanto elected Janice L. Fields, chief operating officer of McDonald’s USA, to its now 10- member board.

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NCR Corp. appointed Richard L. Clemmer and Robert P. DeRodes to its board of directors. Clemmer is a senior adviser to Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. and member of the i2 Technologies board. DeRodes is CIO of Home Depot and previously served as president and CEO of Delta Technology and CIO of Delta Air Lines.

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XETA Technologies named Rick Devenuti, former Microsoft senior vice president and CIO, to its board. Devenuti served in several senior executive positions during almost 20 years at Microsoft, retiring in 2007 as senior vice president of worldwide operations. In addition to his board position, Devenuti will serve as chairman of XETA’s newly formed strategic advisory committee. He is also on the boards of Azaleos and St. Jude Medical.

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Paradigm Management named Roger Jenkins, Frederick M. Hudson, and Jay Himmelstein to its board. Jenkins, who will serve on the compensation committee, is dean of the Farmer School of Business at Miami University of Ohio. Hudson retired from KPMG where he was formerly partner in charge of the healthcare audit practice in its Washington-Baltimore business unit. Himmelstein is assistant chancellor for health policy at the University of Massachusetts Medical School.

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Applied Materials named James E. Rogers to serve on its board and as a member of the human resources and compensation committee, as well as the strategy committee. Rogers is chairman of the board and CEO of Duke Energy. D Frederick W. Kanner Michael Sheehan James E. Rogers Janice L. Fields

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The report, entitled “Continuing our Journey,” was chosen because of its good report structure, guidelines, content and communication.  The company was elected by a distinguished jury chaired by former Prime Minister of Canada Joe Clark, who selected Coca-Cola from more than 100 global companies nominated.