Latest in corporate governance

Even as its market valuation soars amid Wall Street’s enthusiasm for its strong subscriber gains, Netflix shareholders raised corporate governance issues during the company’s annual shareholder meeting. Investors supported a number of stockholder proposals that would give investors a role in the nomination of…

Disney just added a big name to its board of directors: General Motors CEO Mary Barra — the first woman to run one of the major auto companies — was elected, bringing the total at the table to 12. "Beyond being an incredibly respected leader of a major U.S. company, Mary is recognized as an agent of change with a…

CBS just turned Sumner Redstone’s former board seat over to Robert Klieger — the lawyer who defended the mogul last year in his battle to oust former Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman — the company says in an SEC filing. Klieger focuses on entertainment and intellectual property litigation at Hueston Hennigan. His clients…

EXCLUSIVE: 2016 was a so-so year for Big Media companies. But you wouldn’t know that if you look at how much boards paid the chiefs of CBS, Comcast, Discovery Communications, Disney, Fox, Time Warner, and Viacom. Their collective compensation rose 21.1% to $343.8 million — their second highest total ever — we find in…

Discovery CEO David Zaslav achieved 92% of his qualitative goals for 2016, and 99.9% of the quantitative ones, the board determined as it lifted his annual compensation 14.9% last year to $37.2 million, the company disclosed today in its proxy statement filed at the SEC. The package includes a $3 million salary, $15.1…

Discovery Communications just broke the glass ceiling at its board room by tapping C-SPAN co-CEO Susan Swain to join the all-male body beginning December 7. She’ll fill a new seat created as the company raised the number of directors to 11. Swain will be deemed an independent director — meaning she isn’t a part of the…

Here’s a novel idea for companies that want to boost the value of their stocks: Pay the CEO less. That seems to be one of the counter-intuitive lessons from a new study of 429 large-cap U.S. companies: Shareholder returns at the 20% with the lowest CEO compensation outperformed the 20% with the highest pay by as much…

EXCLUSIVE: It’s hard to imagine a group more out of touch with the national zeitgeist than the 82 people who sit on the boards of Big Media companies. At a time when three out of four adults believe CEOs are overpaid, the directors of CBS, Comcast, Discovery, Disney, Fox, Time Warner, and Viacom continued last year to…

Viacom disclosed some of the executive compensation numbers for the 2015 fiscal year earlier this week. But the just-filed proxy at the SEC shows it left out a big component of CEO Philippe Dauman’s package — $17 million in stock awards for his contract renewal — that enabled him to do quite well in a year of brutal…

Viacom hasn’t yet filed its annual proxy statement, which will go into detail about its executive compensation for the 2015 fiscal year. But the company says today that the document will show that ailing Executive Chairman Sumner Redstone’s package was slashed by 85% to $2 million from $13.2 million. While his salary…

Disney just expanded its board — at least temporarily — to 12 members to bring on Nike CEO Mark Parker, who Fortune recently named its “Businessperson of the Year.” The move maintains a formal Disney board connection to Nike: Disney director Orin Smith retired from the sportswear company’s board in September. Disney…

Disney’s board just became bigger and more diverse: Directors voted to increase the membership to 11 with the addition of Maria Elena Lagomasino, the CEO of financial advisory firm WE Family Offices. She’ll become an independent director beginning December 1 and will stand for election at the next shareholder…