Directors roster.

• Author: Porter, Martin
• Position: Survey of board director appointments from Jan to Mar 1999

In affiliation with Spencer Stuart a quarterly record of new director appointments

This edition marks a record-breaking 244 companies listed in the Directors Roster. Our tracking of 308 new directors also closely matches the record of 315 directors published in the Fall 1995 edition. In yet another breakthrough, for the first time in our director-selection research, chairmen/CEOs placed second behind senior executives in the number of candidates recruited.

While our statistics have consistently revealed that CEOs are the prime board candidates, companies increasingly realize they must seek directors from other pools of experience to fill their vacant board seats. One such source is retired executives, who have the requisite management experience, diverse business knowledge, and greater accessibility and time flexibility than their non-retired board colleagues.

Among the 27 retirees in this edition's Roster are former AMR Corp. Chairman and CEO Robert Crandall (joining the board of American Express Co.); Josh S. Weston, honorary chairman of Automatic Data Processing Inc. (Russ Berrie & Co.), and Stephen A. Hansel, former president of Exxon Chemical Co. (Hibernia Corp.).

Crandall, now age 63, retired in 1998 from AMR Corp. after a 25-year tenure. His many achievements include devising the frequent-flyer program and the yield management pricing system, the practice of selling seats on a single flight at various prices.

Crandall tells DIRECTORS & BOARDS that he had come to know American Express quite well over the years while at American Airlines because he had done "a great deal of business" with them.

He agrees that there is a great attraction for major corporations to recruit former members of senior management - especially CEOs - because those individuals have a better grasp on how bigger companies deal with personnel, legal, political, and international business issues. The only major difference he sees between active CEOs and many retired CEOs is their level of time commitment to boards. As an example, he points out that while he was the CEO of AMR, his only outside directorship was at Halliburton Co., where he is still a director. Since retiring, he has added four more boards - American Express, Anixter International Inc., Celestica Inc., and MediaOne Group Inc.

Although Josh Weston retired from ADP in 1998, the 70-year-old former CEO says his "wife still can't tell the damned bit of difference" on...