Stefano Bonini is Assistant Professor of Economics at Stevens Institute of Technology. This post is based on a recent paper by Professor Bonini; Kose John, Charles William Gerstenberg Professor of Banking and Finance at NYU Stern School of Business; and Justin Deng and Mascia Ferrari, both of NYU Stern School of Business.
A growing number of countries, such as UK and France, have adopted tenure-related guidelines or tenure restrictions for independent directors. Most countries adopt a comply-or-explain approach to regulating tenure recommending a maximum tenure for a corporate director between nine and twelve years. In the United States however, where explicit limits are absent, a recent survey by GMI Ratings, the leading independent provider of global corporate governance and research, shows that 24% of independent directors in Russel 3,000 firms have continuously served in the same firm for fifteen years or more.
We argue that long-tenured directors are superiorly skilled individuals who provide tangible value added to their firms. An extension of tenure length allows directors to accumulate information about past events in the firm and about responses to exogenous market shocks that help firms weather crises and discontinuities. In support of the view that the effectiveness of one independent director is also the result of a long build-up process, William George, a Harvard Business School professor and independent director, stated: “When directors are truly independent of the companies they serve, they generally lack the […] knowledge about the industry or business […]. [O]f the nine boards I served on as an independent director I had industry-specific knowledge in exactly none of them.”
