Bio:
Dr. Carolyn Kay Brancato is the Founder and former Director of The Governance Center and The Directors’ Institute at The Conference Board. She is currently CEO of the consulting company, The Riverside Group, Inc. She was named by Directorship Magazine in its inaugural ranking of “One of the Top 100” most influential people in corporate governance in the United States. Her work counseling boards of directors, especially in the area of Enterprise Risk Management, has lead her to meet with corporate boards of directors in dozens of large companies in the U.S., as well as in companies in the U.K., throughout Europe, Hong Kong, Singapore (including Temasek), China (including SASAC), India and the Middle East (including Aramco and the Kuwait Petroleum Company).
Dr. Brancato began her career as a securities analyst for a Wall Street brokerage house then served as an expert witness in regulatory and electric utility economics for the New York State Attorney General’s Office. She then she became Director of the Energy and Industry Analysis and then Head of the Industry Analysis and Finance Division of the Congressional Research Service at the Library of Congress — the internal research organization for the U.S. Congress. In this position for nearly 10 years, she analyzed issues for the United States Congress such as oil disruptions in the Persian Gulf (joint study with the Pentagon), mergers and acquisitions, leveraged buyouts and major economic trends affecting U.S. industries. She served as the Executive Director of the Columbia Law School Institutional Investor Project (which she co-founded with Ira M. Millstein) where she started working with corporate boards in the late 1980’s. In 1992, she served as Staff Director for the U.S. Competitiveness Policy Council’s Subcouncil on Corporate Governance and Financial Markets whose members were chosen by The President, the US House and Senate. Prior to joining The Conference Board she was the Chief Economist of the law firm, Weil Gotshal & Manges handling economic analysis related to antitrust, international trade and mergers and acquisitions.
She is the author of two books, Getting Listed on Wall Street: The Irwin Guide to Financial Reporting Standards in the U.S. (1996) and Institutional Investors and Corporate Governance: Best Practices for Increasing Corporate Value (1997), both published by Business One Irwin. She has authored numerous Conference Board Research Reports including: Corporate Governance Handbook 2007: Legal Standards and Board Practices and The Role of U.S. Boards of Directors in Enterprise Risk Management. During the late 1980’s, she developed and has since maintained the key series of data on ownership and control of U.S. corporations by institutional investors widely used by regulatory agencies, companies and investors.
Dr. Brancato is a Fellow of the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, manufactures & Commerce. She earned her B.A. in economics from Barnard College and her Ph.D. in regulatory economics and public finance from New York University.
For more than twenty years, I have studied the damage short-termism has done to our capital markets and have focused on how corporations can create value through developing non-financial measures of performance to track their drivers of success. Having run the Conference Board Commission on Public Trust, following the Enron and WorldCom debacles, I am startled to see how many abuses continued and how quickly and broadly the current financial crisis of confidence has spread, undermining the entire capital market system as we know it today. The implications for global recession, poverty and potential negative political fall out can only be contemplated in the darkest depths of our imaginations. While there are some signs of improvement, we are nevertheless on a precipice and thought leaders, such as those involved in the Network, must band together, find the best solutions possible and argue for them.
Interests:
For more than twenty years, I have studied the damage short-termism has done to our capital markets and have focused on how corporations can create value through developing non-financial measures of performance to track their drivers of success. Having run the Conference Board Commission on Public Trust, following the Enron and WorldCom debacles, I am startled to see how many abuses continued and how quickly and broadly the current financial crisis of confidence has spread, undermining the entire capital market system as we know it today. The implications for global recession, poverty and potential negative political fall out can only be contemplated in the darkest depths of our imaginations. While there are some signs of improvement, we are nevertheless on a precipice and thought leaders, such as those involved in the Network, must band together, find the best solutions possible and argue for them.
e-mail: rivergrp@comcast.net
