PriceWaterhouseCoopers.

• Author: Steinberg, Richard M.
• Position: Sponsors of Directors' College - Brief Article

A new era of corporate reform demands that boards of directors reassess their existing practices. With some of the largest corporate failures in American history having put the spotlight on today's boardrooms, there is no doubt that the public now expects far more from directors in terms of guiding corporate strategy, overseeing financial reporting, and ensuring that companies operate under the highest ethical standards. Congress has intensified the spotlight by enacting the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, the Securities and Exchange Commission continues to issue new regulations, and national securities exchanges are proposing still more rules--all in an effort to restore public confidence in the U.S. capital markets. Taken together, these initiatives have brought about extensive new requirements for boards of directors.

With the challenge before corporate directors, the inaugural session of the Directors' College held Fall 2002, co-sponsored by PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP and the John L. Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance at the Alfred Lerner College of Business and Economics, University of Delaware, couldn't have been more timely. The...