Unanimous judgment at the inaugural Corporate Secretary Magazine Awards
Nov 12, 2008
New York, November 12, 2008 – The inaugural Corporate Secretary Magazine Awards took place last night, celebrating the industry leaders in governance, risk, compliance and ethics. Pfizer and Colgate-Palmolive impressed the judging panel so much that they respectively won awards for most effective shareholder communication and corporate governance team of the year with unanimous decisions.
Laura Lonsdale of Tyco was joint-winner of the rising star award, which was due in part to the work done at Tyco following its highly publicized governance scandal. Also moving away from past scandal was Gap, which won the award for most innovative CSR disclosure policy. Ira Millstein of law firm Weil Gotshal & Manges received the award for lifetime achievement.
The winners were announced at the inaugural black-tie awards ceremony at Cipriani 23rd Street, New York. A full list of this year’s winners is available below or on our website at www.corporatesecretary.com/awards.
The awards were presented in association with Jenner & Block, supported by the Society of Corporate Compliance & Ethics, and co-sponsored by BNY Mellon Shareowner Services, Broadridge, Corporation Service Company (CSC), CT, DF King & Co, Georgeson – a Computershare company, NYSE Euronext, the Altman Group and TMF.
The award winners were decided by an eight-person judging panel including Norman Veasey, former chief justice of Delaware; Roel Campos, former SEC commissioner (2002-2007); Charles Elson of the John Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance, University of Delaware; Kenneth Bertsch, executive director and head of corporate governance at Morgan Stanley Investment Management; and several other corporate governance experts. For more information on the awards, please contact Athena Sammy at the number listed at the bottom of this release.
About Cross Border Ltd and Corporate Secretary
Cross Border Ltd is the publisher of Corporate Secretary, the governance, risk and compliance monthly. Corporate Secretary has a readership of more than 28,000 and hosts an established annual program of high-level think tanks in the US. Visit www.thecrossbordergroup.com for more details.
For more information, contact:
New York
Athena Sammy
Head of conferences
Tel (direct): +1 212 430 6895
London
Kate Giblin
Webcomms manager
Tel (direct): +44 20 7251 7520
Full list of winners
Corporate secretary of the year
Dannette Smith – UnitedHealth
Corporate governance team of the year
Colgate-Palmolive
Best approach to board member induction and training
UnitedHealth
Most effective shareholder communication
Pfizer
Most innovative CSR disclosure policy
Gap
Most effective compensation disclosure
GE
Best overall governance, compliance and ethics program
Monsanto
Most effective/innovative use of technology in a governance program
Intel
Best proxy statement
RiskMetrics
Best corporate secretary or general counsel in an M&A transaction
Joan Conley & Edward Knight – NASDAQ OMX
Eric Brown – Transocean
Rising star
Douglas Chia – Johnson & Johnson
Laura Lonsdale – Tyco