Board of Directors Positions - Board of Directors Search

"For the last ten years, I have had the opportunity to work with Canny Bowen on numerous searches for the Board of UST, Inc. as the lead Director. During this period, they identified and recruited eight outstanding members for our Board, including diversity candidates. They listened carefully, quickly understood the expertise we wanted to add to the Board and produced results promptly. Most importantly, they made sure that each candidate would fit with our culture."

John Clancy
Chairman
Maersk Inc

Board of Directors Searches

Recruiting a member for a Board of Directors has always been challenging. Sarbanes-Oxley and related legislation has made it more difficult.

Over a period of seven years Canny, Bowen recruited all eight external members of the Board of Directors of a Fortune 500 company — four of them before the passage of Sarbanes-Oxley and four after. Because of increased time demands and concerns about Director liability, the number of candidates who declined interest increased dramatically in the four more recent searches.

A successful Board search needs to consider many things:

Strengths and weaknesses of the current Board
Industry and functional knowledge sought
Expertise gaps
Balance of diverse talents and interests
Whether prior Board experience is essential
Diversity

At Canny, Bowen, however, we believe all of these are trumped in importance by integrity and cultural fit. To determine this requires thorough reference checking.

We have completed Board searches for companies in a wide variety of industries including consumer products, healthcare services, medical devices, and telecommunications, among others.