Barbara Blackford

Barbara Blackford is currently a Senior Advisor to The Conference Board Governance Center. Barbara recently retired from Superior Essex Inc., a Fortune 750 wire and cable manufacturer acquired by LS Corp, a leading South Korea exchange listed company and a member of the LS Group. Barbara has also served as General Counsel of AirGate PCS, a NASDAQ listed Sprint affiliate and Associate General Counsel of Monsanto Company. While at Monsanto, she was head of the Corporate Securities, Corporate Governance and Mergers & Acquisitions legal functions and oversaw more than $40 billion in M&A activity. In all of these roles, she was primarily responsible for providing legal support to the Board of Directors, securities compliance and executive compensation. Barbara served on the Board of Directors of the Society of Corporate Secretaries and Governance Professionals and is a frequent speaker on governance and securities laws. She served as the Reporter for The Conference Board Task Force on Executive Compensation.

Website: http://www.conferenceboard.org/governance

Posts by Barbara Blackford

  • CEO Succession: The Facts (04.12.12 )

    Today, The Conference Board published The CEO Succession Report, which examines CEO succession events at S&P 500 companies for 2001-2011. The report was authored by Jason D. Schloetzer, Matteo Tonello and Melissa Aguilar. Key findings include: 2011 CEO succession rate was 10.8 percent. This rate was consistent with the average number of annual succession announcements […]

  • A New View Into Proxy Voting (02.16.12 )

    In preparing for annual shareholder meetings and evaluating decisions about key governance practices, governance professionals, boards and management often need to evaluate appropriate responses to shareholder proposals and governance practices in light of recent voting results on similar proposals or practices.

  • Governance Practices of IPO Companies – Is Carlyle More Mainstream Than You Thought? (01.30.12 )

    A Director Note by Richard Sandler and Elizabeth Weinstein, Davis Polk & Wardell, recently published by The Conference Board examines the corporate governance practices of the top 50 IPO companies from 2009 through August 2011. A copy of the full Director Note is available here.

  • 2012 Trends for Corporate Social Responsibility and Ethics and Compliance (01.27.12 )

    In the last of my series of posts about trends for 2012, I found two articles of particular interest. Corporate Social Responsibility In an article by Tim Mohin, director of corporate social responsibility at Advanced Micro Devices, published in Forbes, Mohin describes ten key developments to watch in 2012 in corporate social responsibility.

  • NYSE Limiting Broker Discretion for Governance Proposals (01.26.12 )

    The New York Stock Exchange announced new restrictions in the application of its Rule 452 regarding brokers’ ability to vote uninstructed customer shares. Under Rule 452, the NYSE will no longer permit brokers to vote customer shares, without specific customer instructions, on the following governance proposals: Destaggering a company’s board of directors; Majority voting in […]