Professor Bala N. Balasubramanian has authored the latest edition of the NSE Quarterly Briefing titled “Caution: Independent Directors – Hairpin Turns Ahead!”. The abstract/introduction is as follows:
The institution of Independent Directors (D), heralded as a virtual panacea for all governance ills, nearly three decades ago in the UK’s Cadbury prescriptions, is now almost universally under attack for non-performance, criticising voices getting shriller with every corporate scam uncovered and publicised. And the near-precarious situation of IDs, already struggling to cope with the conventional “devil and the deep sea” syndrome of meeting expectations of company controllers on the one hand and the regulatory mandates on the other, seem set to be further exacerbated by some of the proposed legislative amendments to company legislation. Some of these are clearly reactive measures to address issues thrown up by corporate frauds and misdemeanours of the recent past but their impact will, as usual, be suffered by the many for the misdeeds of a few.