Information

Strong, independent Non-Executive Directors (NEDs) are vital to a wide range of organisations, as they bring specialist expertise and valuable insights to the board. The global COVID-19 outbreak has meant that leadership and good governance is more important than ever, but it has also posed a set of challenges to the independent NED.

NEDs are grappling with a series of issues in dealing with this black swan event:

• Striking the right balance between independence and operational involvement
• Assessing the need to shift from constructive challenge to more of a supportive role for the executive
• Navigating the deficiencies of virtual interaction when healthy boards are built on human-level understanding and relationships

ICAEW’s board effectiveness manager, Julia Root-Gutteridge, will explore these issues with Gary Dixon, ICAEW member and experienced NED and founder of INED.

In a change to recent ICAEW webinars, this event will be a shorter, podcast style broadcast, with live video feed of the chair and speaker, and will rely on their conversation with minimal/no slides.

Benefits of attending:

• Insights into the role of an independent NED
• Thoughts on how board members and boards collectively could best respond to the COVID-19 crisis

Speakers 

Gary Dixon trained as a Chartered Accountant with a major global firm following his 1987 graduation from the University of Leicester in Physics with Astrophysics. After gaining an MBA from Warwick Business School, he left the accountancy profession in 1994 and moved to work within financial services. He became the CFO of a small, diversified group and was primarily responsible for finance, regulation and governance of the group’s banking, insurance, pension and fund management businesses. In 2001 Gary formed a FSA compliance consultancy, Compliance Solutions, which he successfully grew (both organically and by acquisition) to be the market leader within the UK. Following the sale of this business in 2007 to a US listed company, Gary retired from full time work to spend time on his Non Executive Director (NED) roles. He is currently Chair of Council at the University of Leicester and is a NED at the Universities Superannuation Scheme Ltd, the UK’s largest pension scheme by assets.

Julia Root-Gutteridge is Manager for Board Effectiveness at ICAEW. Her role is to develop and deliver high quality support for ICAEW members who hold executive or non-executive director roles, as well as members who aspire join a board. As part of this support for members, she runs the Corporate Governance Community, a network of over 2,000 ICAEW members and governance professionals, which hosts a rich programme of roundtables, panel events and networking events on topics such as culture, trust in business, and board dynamics. She works with a wide range of members across business and practice to understand their challenges and ensure their views are fed back into ICAEW’s policy making and member services.

Costs

All ICAEW members are welcome to join this webinar. To get the most from this session, we recommend that you join the community. Please click to join for free online.

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ICAEW is collating resources to offer support and information to members as conditions unfold.

Visit the hub: icaew.com/insights/coronavirus