EY's new report: "A fresh look at board committees" identifies these S&P 500 board committee statistics and trends based on its review of proxy statements filed from 2013 through May 15, 2018:
- Board committee structure has remained largely the same for the past six years, with non-bank boards generally relying on the three key committees: Audit, Compensation and Nominating/Governance, and bank boards generally relying on those three plus the large bank holding company-required Risk Committee.
- 76% of companies have at least one additional standing committee - most commonly Executive (36%) or Finance (36%). Other standing committees are much less prevalent, with Compliance being the next most common at 16%, followed by Risk (11%) and Technology (7%).
- The industries with the most additional committees (two or more) are Financial, Telecommunications, and Utilities.
- 10% of companies assigned oversight of cybersecurity, digital transformation and IT to an additional committee - typically Technology, Risk or Compliance Committees.
The helpful benchmarking table on page 3 of the report identifies the percentage of companies and top industry sectors associated with each of the six most common types of additional committees and their usual responsibilities. See also last year's report.
We first reported on this board committee analysis - along with reports on board Finance Committees and management-level Disclosure Committees - in this week's Society Alert!