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Content Type:
CDM Article
01 Apr 2013
John M Green questions whether working from home may be shirking from home.
With swathes of non-executive directors working from home (WFH) for big licks of time, we must think it’s a top idea. For a lot of what we do, it is.
Technology is now so brilliant. It’s a snap to zip through board ...
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Content Type:
CDM Article
01 Mar 2013
John M Green predicts the rise of a “corpocracy” in the 21st century.
Have you ever wondered what the corporation’s next big leap might be? It’s not a crazy question with today’s structure virtually frozen since shrewd industrial revolution lawmakers invented it 150 years ago.
The ent...
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Content Type:
CDM Article
01 Feb 2013
John M Green applauds our corporate regulator’s successes on insider trading.
Back in the Wild West, before the global financial crisis (GFC), insider trading and market manipulation were thought rampant. But not today, thanks to the efforts of the Australian Securities and Investments Co...
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Content Type:
CDM Article
01 Dec 2012
John M Green ponders what the year 2013 may hold for us.
Christmas is the time when people of all faiths join together in peace and harmony to rejoice in retail. Christmas is also about pausing, but only after you’ve finished shopping.
As the holiday season approaches, it’s wise to re...
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Content Type:
CDM Article
01 Nov 2012
John M Green questions whether companies value culture and reputation highly enough.
In June, Barclays PLC’s outgoing chairman admitted the company’s role in the UK’s LIBOR inter-bank interest rate scandal had "dealt a devastating blow" to its reputation. Unsaid, but more important, was h...
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Content Type:
CDM Article
01 Oct 2012
John M Green argues that the assault on two of Australia’s freedoms – speech and the press – is bad for business.
Greetings from the "land of the free", the US – a place where, sadly, more people find they’re "free" to be poor than Australia has people in total. But it’s also a place wher...
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Content Type:
CDM Article
01 Sep 2012
John M Green discusses David Jones’ continuous disclosure challenges in the wake of a recent “takeover bid”.
Was retailer David Jones as ham-fisted as many media claimed when it responded to a "leak" about a strange takeover approach and saw its share price spike 15 per cent afterwards? H...
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Content Type:
CDM Article
01 Aug 2012
John M Green believes double-entry accounting is a two-edged sword.
I was recently in Venice, an enchanting spot to inhale history, culture, art and accounting. Yes, accounting was central to the Venetians’ success as powerful traders during the Renaissance, when their Rialto was the swag...
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Content Type:
CDM Article
01 Jul 2012
John M Green observes that not all orthodoxies are created equal.
You’ve heard the joke: What’s the capital of Greece? Answer: Five Euros. Except it’s not funny, not even when it was about Ireland. Capital clearly isn’t permanent, and that applies to companies even more than countries.
...
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Content Type:
CDM Article
01 Jun 2012
John M Green says the time it takes to clear a director’s name is a national scandal.
When the High Court delivered its James Hardie decision last month, some directors slammed it as a line drawn too far, yet others waved it off as no change. Yet in all the commentary, a scandalous aspec...
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Content Type:
CDM Article
01 May 2012
John M Green gets cultural as “risk appetite” leaves him peckish.
After the torrid last few years, regulators and governance gurus are latching onto "risk appetite" as the new god of risk management. I’m not a devoted believer because they’re ignoring culture.
Here’s a typical definit...
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Content Type:
CDM Article
01 Apr 2012
John M Green explains why intelligent and effective risk management and constructive scepticism are crucial in a world of imperfect information and human biases.
Descartes said: "I think, therefore I am." But more than a millennium earlier, St Augustine said: "Si fallor, sum." This is a ...
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Content Type:
CDM Article
01 Mar 2012
John M Green explains why computer tablets in the boardroom are good, but not great. Not yet.
Business people are increasingly taking tablets to meetings, yet not long ago you only took them to fend off headaches. There are also tablets that let you blissfully imagine rather fanciful thin...
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Content Type:
CDM Article
01 Feb 2012
John M Green provides a reality check to remind you of some of the hurdles directors face.
Visualise a bunny. Not just any bunny, but one in the cross-hairs of a rifle that’s already cocked. That bunny is you, by the way: a non-executive director (NED).
So when people tell me they wan...
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Content Type:
CDM Article
01 Aug 2011
John M Green explains the synergies of being both a company director and a novelist.
A reader of this page asked me if being a company director enjoyed any synergies with my other life as a novelist. It does, and not just the odd twist when a real corporate saga plays out like fiction in s...
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Content Type:
CDM Article
01 Sep 2010
John M Green
argues that boards can leave too much on the table when issuing equity for acquisitions.
Mates rates grate
It’s spring, but when did you last hear anyone mention green shoots? The global mergers and acquisitions (M&A) vine is ...
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Content Type:
CDM Article
01 Aug 2010
John M Green
suggests business should demand as much from politicians as politicians do from business.
Double standards
Recently, two newspaper articles stared up from the same front page. In one, the corporate regulator rightly warned companies not to issue misleading profit fig...
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Content Type:
CDM Article
01 Jul 2010
John M Green
believes business people should start thinking more like novelists.
Foresight saga
“In hindsight...” Painful, often embarrassing confessions sometimes begin with those words. It is only in the future that you know how smart you are in the present. It’s why hubris is such a ...
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Content Type:
CDM Article
01 Jun 2010
John M Green
believes the regulators should lighten up on continuous disclosure.
Killer T-shirts
What’s my daughter’s black T-shirt got to do with public companies continuously disclosing material information to the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX)? Oddly, it has quite a bit to do wi...
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Content Type:
CDM Article
01 May 2010
John M Green
suggests it may not be the proxy advisory firms that are the problem, but some of the institutions that hire them.
Proxy by proxy
During each year’s annual general meeting season, directors come out blasting at corporate governance proxy advisory firms. It’s mostly d...