Joele Frank and Anne Chapman: Strategic Communications, Activism, and Governance

(0:00) Intro to this episode (1:34) About the podcast sponsor: The American College of Governance Counsel. (2:21) Start of interview (3:19) Joele Frank's origin story (5:02) Anne Chapman's origin story (8:41) The history and focus of the firm Joelle Frank (now has ~250 people, with offices in NYC and SF). (12:46) Shareholder activism in today's market (15:52) The Exxon Mobil activism case [see E28 with Aiesha Mastagni from CalSTRS, starting at 23:27] (18:17) Say-on-Pay and Executive Compensation Dynamics "compensation is a real emotional topic" (21:27) On mega grants. (23:17) The evolution of M&A in shareholder activism (25:44) Geopolitical Tensions in the Boardroom. Examples: US Steel (Golden share by US), MP Materials (10% equity stake). (28:38) Evolution of ESG/DEI, including boardroom diversity. (33:00) AI, PBCs, and Governance Challenges. Is it a bubble? Concern about ethical AI. (38:35) Case Study: Norfolk's Proxy Fight. Digital component to increase retail component of the vote. (44:14) How activists are proposing more qualified directors to boards (focus on individual directors post universal proxy rules). (48:50) The Changing Landscape of Board Composition (49:55) The Importance of Board Evaluations (51:45) On the "stay private or go public" debate Joele Frank is the founder and Managing Partner of Joele Frank. Anne Chapman is a Managing Director at Joele Frank. You can follow Evan on social media at: X: @evanepstein LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/epsteinevan/  Substack: https://evanepstein.substack.com/ __ To support this podcast you can join as a subscriber of the Boardroom Governance Newsletter at https://evanepstein.substack.com/ __ Music/Soundtrack (found via Free Music Archive): Seeing The Future by Dexter Britain is licensed under a Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License