Richard Blake: 2024 Silicon Valley 150 Corporate Governance Report

(0:00) Intro. (2:09) About the podcast sponsor: The American College of Governance Counsel. (2:56) Start of interview. *Reference to prior episode with Richard (E126 from Feb 2024). (3:46) About his firm's 2024 SV150 Corporate Governance Report. (9:04) On Virtual (Stockholder) Meetings (89% of SV150). (11:23) Board Committee Structures. Audit, Comp, NomGov, and Others. (14:02) On SV150's approach to ESG, impact of new SEC. (18:53) On the evolution of boardroom diversity, impact of CA laws and Nasdaq Diversity Rule. (21:40) Why private ordering will become more important in corporate governance. (22:28) On dual or multi class share structures (-30% of SV150, and of those, 91% have sunset provisions). (25:25) On ServiceTitan's compounding IPO ratchet (reference to my article about it). "Governance is a spectrum" (31:29) On evolution of shareholder proposals in SV150. *Reference to E15 with Jim McRitchie. (36:30) On shareholder activism (7.4%) in SV150. (41:41) On the clawback policies of SV150 companies (48:27) On the backlash to Delaware incorporations and SV moving out of CA. Reference to WSGR's DE's Status as the Favored Corporate Home. (51:49) Biggest winner in business in 2024 (53:27) Biggest loser in business in 2024 (54:27)  Biggest business surprise in 2024  (56:53) Best and worst corporate governance trend from 2024 (58:28)  What’s the biggest corporate governance trend to watch out for in 2025 Richard Blake is a partner at Wilson Sonsini and the leader of the firm's public companies’ practice. 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