✒ For good corporate governance, the general rules are that “the roles of chair and chief executive should not be exercised by the same individual” and “a chief executive should not become chair of the same company”.
As Jeff Bezos is stepping down as the CEO and moving to become executive chair, only seven out of the top 20 companies have independent chairs.
However, out of the seven, four of those chairs (Apple’s Art Levinson, Alphabet’s John Hennessy, Walmart’s Greg Penner, and Microsoft’s John Thompson) have been there for too long, while the chair of Saudi Aramco as a state-owned oil company can hardly be regarded as independent.
That leaves Tesla’s Robyn Denholm and Samsung Electronics’ Bahk Jae-wan as the two finalists. But the author argues that Bahk Jae-wan is only there in response to scandals, while the Tesla-SEC deal expires this year.