Nell Minow
What better way to bring in the new year than to get advice from Nell Minow, the Queen of Good Corporate Governance, especially with the Trump Administration about to begin? In the talk below, Minow addresses an audience sponsored by the Center for Study of Responsive Law, which held its second four-day conference on securing long-overdue democratic solutions in Washington, D.C. from September 26-28, 2016.
In her brief talk, Nell Minow offers several simple strategies for retail shareholders on how we can impact corporate boards. Ready to roll up your sleeves but need some help? I highly recommend two practical guides:
- The Shareholder Action Guide by Andrew Behar
- Shareowner Action Handbook by James McRitchie, an ongoing work in progress (slow progress)
Biographical Information about Nell Minow
Below is some information about Nell Minow copied from Wikipedia with a few edits and without the footnotes. I left out most of the ‘Movie Mom’ references… Yes, Minow is famous in more than one sphere of life.
Ms. Minow was named one of the 20 most influential people in corporate governance by Directorship magazine in 2007. She was dubbed “the queen of good corporate governance” by BusinessWeek Online in 2003 and has received Lifetime Achievement awards from both the International Corporate Governance Network and Corporate Secretary Magazine.
The daughter of Josephine (Baskin) and former Federal Communications Commission Chairman Newton N. Minow (Barack Obama named him a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom for 2016.), and sister of Harvard Law School Dean Martha Minow and Stanford University law library expert Mary Minow, she is a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College (1974) and the University of Chicago Law School, J.D., (1977).
Nell Minow wrote the “Risky Business” column for BNET and was a member of the board of GMI Ratings (formerly The Corporate Library, where she was editor, chair, and co-founder), an independent research company, until August 2014, when it was acquired by MSCI. She has co-written three books in the field with Robert A.G. Monks and is founder and editor of Miniver Press, a publishing company.
She was formerly Principal of LENS, an “investment firm that bought stock in under-performing companies and used shareholder activism to increase their value.” In addition, she was dubbed “the CEO Killer” by Fortune magazine for her record of ousting non-performing CEOs at companies like Sears, American Express, Kodak, and Waste Management. Furthermore, she “served as general counsel and then President of Institutional Shareholder Services, Inc., a firm that advises institutional investors on issues of corporate governance, and as an attorney at the Environmental Protection Agency, the Office of Management and Budget, and the United States Department of Justice.”
Minow frequently comments on the financial markets in the press and on television, including op-eds in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Chicago Tribune, and USA Today, and on network news broadcasts. She has reportedly “written more than 200 articles about corporate governance” and has contributed to a number of business books.
Nell Minow was prominently featured in an October 2009 article in “The New Yorker” about CEO compensation.
Books by Nell Minow
- The Movie Mom’s Guide to Family Movies (Avon, 1999; iUniverse, 2d edition, 2004).
- Power and Accountability (1991)(with Robert A. G. Monks)
- Corporate Governance (editions in 1995, 2001, 2003, 2008, 2011) (with Robert A. G. Monks)
- Watching the Watchers: Corporate Governance for the 21st Century (1996)(with Robert A. G. Monks)
- Contributed chapters to:
- Law Stories
- The Dance of Change
- The Financial Services Revolution
- Leadership and Governance from the Inside Out
- How to Run a Company
- The Handbook of Board Governance: A Comprehensive Guide for Public, Private, and Not-for-Profit Board Member
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