This new report from Compensation Advisory Partners: “Do Non-Executive Chairs and Lead Directors Serve on Board Committees?” benchmarked the prevalence of non-executive board chair and lead director service on each of the three key board committees (i.e., Audit, Compensation, Governance) of the 100 largest US companies.
Among the key takeaways:
Committee member service
Board chairs and lead directors commonly serve on at least one of the three key committees (averaging 1.1 and 1.4 committees, respectively), as shown here:
Among those that serve on at least one committee, both board chairs and lead directors are most likely to serve on the Governance Committee (59% and 57%, respectively) and are least likely to serve on the Audit Committee (13% and 32%, respectively), with service on the Compensation Committee at 33% (chair) and 48% (lead director), respectively.
Committee chair service
Board leadership committee service does not necessarily translate to chairing the committee. Although the majority of lead directors who serve on the Governance Committee also serve as Governance Committee chair, their service on the Audit Committee is in practice limited to membership only:
While board chairs on the Governance Committee chair that committee much less often than lead directors (35% for board chairs compared to 56% for lead directors), they are much more likely to chair the other two key committees than a lead director member, as shown above.