Margaret Foran of Sara Lee and Wendy Webb of Ticketmaster Entertainment talk about the advantages and challenges of their additional roles as board members
Margaret Foran, Sara Lee
IR experience on its own isn’t going to get you on a board, says Margaret ‘Peggy’ Foran, executive vice president, chief counsel and corporate secretary of Sara Lee Corp in Illinois. ‘Boards are looking for skill sets,’ she notes. ‘They’re looking for diversity – for certain types of experience based on the company’s specific needs.’
Firms are looking for board members with operational experience first and foremost, adds Foran, who served on two public company boards, the Mutual of New York Group and the Mutual of New York Life Insurance Company, prior to their merger with AXA Financial in 2004. She suggests IROs interested in landing board positions need to make themselves visible and highlight experience and skills that are in high demand.
‘You can hire a lawyer, a proxy solicitor or someone who knows your investors,’ Foran says. ‘So what type of skills do you want for a board member? They should know how boards operate. What does the company need? How does it select board members? All of these questions are important.’
Foran agrees that opportunities are opening up for IROs to serve on boards as firms become more stringent about senior management serving on other companies’ boards. As many IROs have a deep knowledge of the financial issues across a firm, they often bring valuable financial and governance expertise.
‘If a company is expanding rapidly and the IRO has a lot of transactional experience, as a lawyer or as an IRO dealing with top investors or hedge funds, or if the IRO has been through a bankruptcy and that may be one of the challenges a company is facing, that could make the IRO valuable to a board,’ she says.
Foran advises aspiring IRO board members to write articles in their specific areas of expertise, seize opportunities to speak in public and get to know recruiters. Most of all, she says, they should find ways to network with directors, such as by joining private or non-profit boards, which is a highly effective way to get attention.
‘It’s a powerful development tool to be on the board of another company in another industry and have the opportunity to learn,’ Foran adds. Many boards, especially at larger companies, have rich development programs that typically account for 25-30 hours of the 250-300 that Foran estimates a typical directorship requires.
‘I don’t think any company says, Let’s go out and find an IRO to serve on the board,’ she says. ‘But I do think there are lots of IROs who have really good experience that would be beneficial to a board.’
Wendy Webb, Ticketmaster Entertainment
When Wendy Webb was IR chief at Walt Disney, she got a call from an executive recruiter looking for a new board member for Jack in the Box. The fast-food chain was seeking a director with financial expertise and an understanding of shareholder needs. The ability to travel to board meetings in San Diego at least five times a year was also important. For Webb, who was based in California, it was a perfect fit.
She interviewed for the post and was subsequently invited to join the board in July 2008. In the meantime, she became chief communications and investor relations officer at Ticketmaster Entertainment. When she joined the Ticketmaster team in April 2008, she made her new employer aware of the pending obligation. ‘It was a confluence of starting a new job with a new company, and really wanting to do the board position,’ Webb recalls. ‘It’s acknowledged in my Ticketmaster contract that I’m fully expecting to fulfill my board position.’
Ticketmaster’s senior management was enthusiastic about Webb’s Jack in the Box board seat and the potential for cross-pollination of ideas and additional insight into building an international brand.
There are some unique challenges to this situation: IROs who routinely safeguard confidential information for their own companies must be careful of conflicts of interest if they also serve as directors. Webb advises IROs who are interested in board service to work only with non-competing companies, preferably in entirely different industries.
Of course, IROs’ demanding day-jobs can get in the way of board obligations, which can amount to 20 or more hours per month in addition to travel time. Webb says it’s important for board members to be upfront about their obligations, both to their employer and to the board they sit on.
Today there are very few IROs serving on boards, but Webb expects that to change as more companies restrict the board service of their CEOs and other senior management; especially during difficult economic times, companies don’t want their senior management members focused on anything other than their primary positions. At the same time, Webb says, more companies are open to first-time board members, which creates opportunities for those in other posts in the company.
‘In addition to deep knowledge about institutional and retail investors, it is an obligation of the board to act in the best interests of shareholders,’ says Webb. ‘Who understands that better than an IRO?’
