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Guests At The Table?: Independent Directors In Family-Influenced Public Companies, Deborah A. Demott

Deborah A DeMott

By some measures, family-controlled companies account for about a third of public companies in the United States. Public companies that retain characteristics of family companies pose a series of intriguing questions about corporate governance that center in particular on the roles and duties of directors. These are surprisingly unexplored in legal scholarship. Although concentrated ownership is more extensive in many capital markets outside the United States, numerous recent examples raise questions about governance within publicly-held family companies. In such companies, shareholders who are members of the founding family often have perspectives and interests that diverge from those of non-family public …