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The long running ‘Wagatha Christie’ libel case result has found that the case brought by Mrs Vardy against Mrs Rooney was futile as there was no significant reputation damage. What can the public [...]

According to Lord Palmerston only three people really understood the Schleswig Holstein question ‘One was dead, one was mad and himself, but he had forgotten it’. There is a real danger with the [...]

Boris Johnson resigned as leader of the Conservative party on 7 July 2022, but he did not resign as Prime Minister of the government. The media have moved on to talk about the race for a [...]

Is your board in denial about a risk that is obvious yet nobody will acknowledge? Maybe it is hidden in plain sight because to admit it would challenge a key policy and require a major rethink? [...]

How do you measure reputation damage? This is a question I am often asked although the answer depends whether the reputation is for a person, organisation or a place. Each shares a common theme [...]

https://boardagenda.com/2022/04/22/battle-of-the-boards-risk-esg-and-two-tier-board-structures/ Published in Board Agenda 22 April 2022 So, your risk committee reports to the board and can [...]

Thursday 24 February 2022 will long be remembered as the day the Putin war started. Ironically only the previous week I spoke on the Henley Board Development Programme about the risk posed by a [...]

https://boardagenda.com/2022/01/25/how-risk-blindness-threatens-the-effectiveness-of-board-decisions/ Published in Board Agenda 25 Jan 2022 by Garry Honey A board’s highly sophisticated procedure [...]

ESG strategies have been popular with fund managers and institutional investors for a couple of years. However, small investors continue to seek clear definition of what an ESG compliant business [...]

Both the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) have examined the causes of the collapse of Archegos Capital last March. Losses of $10million hit a number of [...]

Reputation is a precious commodity to a business or leader, damage can not only destroy current value but future value and trust. Studying reputational damage and corporate governance for over 30 [...]

Yesterday I had the pleasure to speak at #Henley Business School on the #Board Directors Programme courtesy of @Andrew Kakabadse. My topic ‘What boards need to know about risk’ was well received [...]

There are only two possible risk outcomes: lucky and wrong. It is worth examining the role of luck and why some outcomes are luckier than others. Friday the thirteenth is supposed to be an [...]

The rate of confirmed Covid cases in the UK is now one of the highest in the world. According to the Huffington Post cases among older people are seven times higher than in neighbouring European [...]

‘I see no ships’ is reputedly what Admiral Nelson said in 1801 at the battle of Copenhagen when he deliberately held a telescope to his blind eye. He didn’t want to acknowledge a flag signal [...]

Risk blindness and risk denial are not just found in the boardroom, they also feature in government as well. The supply chain crisis now unravelling through a shortage of key workers like lorry [...]

Understanding Probability is the most important aspect of risk analysis……..probably. A case could also be made for Severity, but is this really valid? Whether you employ a five-point scale from [...]

A diverse board is often praised by regulators and investors as evidence of both inclusion and fair representation at the top level of any organisation. But is diversity really welcome if it [...]

Diversity means different things to different boards:  if yours is mainly white, male and middle-aged this means promoting women, ethnic minorities and youth for balance. Is this [...]

Risk Management as a discipline is well established yet boards frequently fail to see or act on risk which ultimately leads to crisis. Is this a failure of process, people or perception? There is [...]

With an imminent end to lockdown in the UK, the authorities have been trying to educate the public about the balance of risk, the need to make sound judgements about the trade-offs we make in our [...]

What links Reputation, Risk and ESG? For boardrooms they are all important but separate concerns; however there is a common theme in that they all involve prediction of the future. Now a new book [...]

What is your view on tax avoidance by international corporations? There is some debate about what constitutes good governance according to the principles of ESG investing. I mean legitimate tax [...]

The UK government is reluctant to mandate vaccine passports as part of the route-map out of lockdown. There are concerns about ethics, discrimination, rights and privacy which the Prime Minister [...]

Yesterday I joined the 13 million already vaccinated in the UK. Within just over a fortnight weeks this should give me around 65% immunity; my second dose within 12 weeks should raise this [...]

The UK vaccination rate is impressive but little attention is paid to the infection rate which is crucial if the virus is to be defeated. Testing has increased since last year with more [...]

While investors continue to pile into ESG funds, recent research shows that corporate boards still don’t fully appreciate that ESG should be integral to strategy. The PwC corporate directors [...]

Last week the medicines regulator (MHRA) refused to approve mass daily testing in schools, yet next week teachers will be required to take virus tests twice a week, so what has prompted this [...]

The UK government applies lockdown differently to many other countries, preferring to encourage new habits of social interaction rather than dictate or prescribe them. However, using language [...]

As we approach the first anniversary of the pandemic outbreak, it is clear that the future of work is going to change forever, and normal is not something to which reversion is possible. Managing [...]

Whether the UK leaves the EU with or without a trade deal, the UK government will claim it has achieved a victory: the UK will have regained its sovereignty after 45 years. However sovereignty [...]

Vaccine approval by the MHRA and the early supplies of the Pfizer drug from Belgium are both welcome, only anti-vaxers would say otherwise, but why has the government suddenly altered the top [...]

Many people believe that Boris Johnson should have sacked his Home Secretary, Priti Patel, for breaching the ministerial code. Certainly the Prime Minister’s personal advisor Sir Anthony Allan [...]

We define a good leader as one who is appropriate for the situation: someone who brings stability to chaotic upheaval, or conversely someone who brings disruptive change to stagnant inertia. In [...]

Reputation damage is costly and that is why so many people and organisations would like to insure it against loss. Unfortunately it cannot be insured because reputation is a behavioural risk; [...]

Borders are critical as any student of political geography will tell you, irrespective of what is happening in Azerbaijan or Ulster. The can that has been kicked down the road for three years [...]

Today the contact tracing app is finally launched as part of the UK government strategy to combat the covid virus. Will this be a useful tool or another expensive experiment in centralised big [...]

Viral epidemics have been part of human civilisation for centuries. Black Death in the fourteenth and Plague in the seventeenth, are only the most famous but there were many more local [...]

Risk is a choice you take having balanced the cost against the gain. In the corporate investment world a vast number of factors are considered in taking financial risk. By contrast in the legal [...]

What is the greatest risk to reputation? It must surely be that people decide you cannot be trusted to deliver on your promises. Relationships, both personal and commercial depend on trust as a [...]

It is almost 50 years since Milton Friedman declared social responsibility ‘unadulterated socialism’. The primary responsibility of a company board as he saw it was to its shareholders measured [...]

Nineteen weeks after lockdown began in the UK on 23 March and the government message has shifted from ‘stay at home’ to ‘go back to the office’. Employers are now responsible for making the [...]

The Russia report of the intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) released today claims that Russian money was probably used to buy influence in British politics. It claims that the UK [...]

Government figures released on Thursday 24 June show just how poorly the test and trace system is working in the UK yet correcting this doesn’t appear to be a priority for the [...]

No government covers itself in glory handling a new virus; mistakes will be made learning on the job. However the UK government is still not in control of the epidemic and has incurred a higher [...]

The UK government policy change from ‘Stay at home’ to ‘Stay alert’ represents a watershed moment in the country’s response to coronavirus.  What was previous an unacceptable risk has [...]

Did the government achieve its target of 100,000 tests by 30 April? A third of these were not executed by health officials at test sites, mobile or fixed, but were home tests dispatched for [...]

‘I have never yet seen a risk register that was fit for purpose’ is a sentiment with which I have a lot of sympathy, but confidentiality forbids me from attributing its [...]

Imagine you are on a window ledge ten feet above the ground, if you jump there is a risk you may break your leg or at best sprain an ankle; your appetite for this risk is low so why jump if you [...]

No government has a template for the perfect exit from lockdown; everyone is experimenting cautiously while there remains no cure for Covid-19. Exit too late and economic damage is too costly, [...]

Exiting from lockdown is a political nightmare demanding complex risk decisions. The Treasury and business leaders want to get the economy working as soon as possible so lobby for early exit; [...]

One vital lesson from the Coronavirus response will be the way risk is assessed and mitigated, especially those risks recognised as high impact but low frequency. These we tend to call Black Swan [...]

The UK government has been quick to realise the impact of the virus on those facing monthly bills now deprived of the income to service debt, those not receiving a regular salary such as the [...]

Coronavirus is eating away at the fabric of society worldwide, never mind calling it Covid-19 how about regarding it as an anagram of ‘Carnivorous’. How do you rate your chances of catching it? [...]

Institutional investor demand is driving the agenda for corporate reporting. No longer is it sufficient to boast of sufficient profit to increase shareholder dividend, regulators now want you to [...]

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) is to investigate whether the advice provided by Independent Financial Advisors (IFAs) really is truly independent and in the customer’s best interest. There [...]

A new report from the National Audit Office into the forecast cost to the Treasury of HS2 rail project reveals the government failed to understand the risk to the public purse from the outset in [...]

Last week the FRC published its annual review of the Corporate Governance code. It found many companies failing to do more than pay lip service to the guidelines of the new Stewardship code. What [...]

More news emerging from the Boeing investigation into the 737 Max suggests that attention was placed on securing regulator approval to the exclusion of product refinement and ultimate passenger [...]

Earlier this year both Carillion and Thomas Cook spectacularly collapsed when it became clear that their respective boards failed to spot financial warning signs. Both the Corporate and [...]

The new Risk Coalition guidance clearly sets out the duties of a risk committee, composed of Non-Executive Directors. It has eight principles as an advisory body however, as principle one notes [...]

‘A relationship is like a shark, when it is not moving forward it is dead…what we have here is a dead shark’ said Woody Allen in Annie Hall. It follows that a corporate board is also like a shark [...]

The sudden collapse of Thomas Cook, like Carillion, raises urgent questions of board vigilance and competence. Directors of listed companies have a duty of care to their shareholders, employees [...]

Activist shareholders are minority stake disruptors who seek to challenge the complacency and complicity of institutional investors for underperforming stock. They are not afraid to spoil the [...]

The ‘dog days’ of August get their name from the dog star Sirius which is visible at this time of year, it is not true that the minority government of Boris Johnson  will be [...]

The UK water company Southern Water has accepted a fine of £126M from the water regulator Ofwat for deliberately misreporting its sewage treatment and waste water discharges. The Environment [...]

A survey published in the Sunday Times recently suggested that reputation could be the biggest future risk for any business. Quoting a variety of sources the Raconteur report claimed that [...]

Shareholder activism is on the rise and according to Lazards more investors are using activism as a tactic putting increasing pressure on boards to defend their strategy in the face of calls [...]

Some people invest in a company because they trust the leadership to deliver shareholder value, due to track record and board composition. Some people invest in company because they like the [...]

How should you respond when an overseas hedge fund takes an active interest in your business? Many CEOs treat this as impertinence: an outsider questioning  strategy and competence of the [...]

‘How could we have prevented this?’A question I frequently hear from those in the middle of fire-fighting a reputational crisis. Needless to say at this point repairing damage and [...]

In almost 20 years of writing about the cost of reputation damage and by implication reputation as a risk, there are two fundamental givens. The first is that the value of reputation is only [...]

The decision by Unilever, the Anglo-Dutch company,  to retain London as its headquarters is a blow to Rotterdam and a climb-down by senior members of the board who had been keen on the move.  [...]

The Salzburg meeting would not be complete without a comment on its impact on reputation. On the one hand the reputation of Britain within the EU as it seeks to extract itself within the next six [...]

News this week from the Investment Association confirms earlier reports from Lazards and Forbes, namely that shareholder activism is on the increase. Shareholder revolts against the [...]

Are you surprised  by the defensive response by Premier Foods to the activist shareholder Oasis suggestion that the CEO should go? Isn’t this simply an attempt to engage the more [...]