To Accommodate Growing Workloads, Boards are Electing Independent Board Chairs, Holding More Meetings, and Experimenting with Committee Structures

A new report by The Conference Board ESG Center reveals that boards are increasingly electing independent board chairs. In the S&P 500, 30 percent of companies had independent board chairs in 2018, which has grown fairly steadily to 37 percent as of June 2022. This trend doesn’t seem to be driven by investor sentiment, as support for shareholder proposals calling for independent chairs has remained in the 30 percent range, but rather by company-specific circumstances and the increased workload of boards and management. In particular, CEO succession events – which have recently seen