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Serving as a leader and facilitator, the chair presides over meetings. Primarily, the chair’s responsibility is to the board.
Chairs must ensure that the meeting process is as seamless, constructive, and deliberative as it needs to be when the board gathers.
Chairs’ roles can vary widely across different industries. Often, it depends on the company size; smaller companies will have chairs that are more active in the company’s day-to-day life. Some may concurrently serve as CEO.
In bigger companies, this is less likely. It is also generally not recommended to preserve independent observation and cooperation and maintain a system of checks and balances at the top level.
If you’re new in the role of chair or have ambition to become one, here are some tips on maximising your impact.
You know your role
A chair is not a CEO, not a managing director, and is not concerned with leading employees. It’s important to remember this because the definition can become lost in practice.
This is especially true for former CEOs, managing directors, and other executives who have now moved on to fill the role of chair. Such people need to leave their hands-on, direct leadership mindset behind, but they can sometimes struggle.
One of the chair’s primary roles is facilitating and planning board meetings.
Acting like a CEO in a board meeting – with more command and less guidance – will stifle colleagues’ voices and limit the board’s ability to be the think tank it’s supposed to be.
You are ready to act
A good chair knows that they are at the helm of a board that may need to act fast and decisively if the company finds itself in hot water. The CEO, who may well hold the most power day-to-day, may suddenly look to the board for urgent decisions in a crisis.
The chair holds a powerful voice on the board when this happens.
Decisions are never yours to make alone, but when something goes wrong, your colleagues will depend on you to create a positive, deliberative discussion around what to do next.
In hot water, a company may have tough decisions to make; maybe its best next move is a rapid change in environmental policy, an en-masse move to remote working or a dismissal of the CEO?
You will need the experience to know what this move should be, the confidence to endorse it, and the ability to take others’ opinions on board to ensure it’s done correctly.
You maintain your independence
Take the above point with the caveat that the reverse is also true.
Your role is chair; if you’re not on hand to deal with an urgent, top-level problem, take a step back.
Maintaining a healthy level of distance from the organisation’s inner workings is essential.
Ensure that you are looking at the organisation’s progress with a ‘sovereign mindset’, free of day-to-day management issues, fuelled by your industry experience and knowledge.
That experience, your broad judgement, and your ability to facilitate discussion are your strengths. They let you see opportunities and challenges for the organisation that others might not.
The chair is a vital link between all of these areas of governance, and colleagues should enjoy a sense of comfort and confidence in the environment you create
You’re a good relationship manager
As chair, you will work alongside a collection of board members – each with a wealth of experience, each with their unique view on the company’s direction.
In addition, you need to act as a mentor to the CEO, as an ambassador in the industry, and as a link between shareholders on one end and employees on the other.
This is where your ability to manage relationships matters.
If you’re chair, you’re a vital link between all of these areas of governance, and colleagues should enjoy a sense of comfort and confidence in the environment you create. Otherwise, that vital link risks being broken.
It would help if you were a good communicator, listener, and facilitator.
When fellow board members have issues to address, ensure they can manage them.
And above all, if you see friction developing within or between these company layers, be ready to tackle it.
You’re committed to the role
Chairs are some of the most respected members of a governance community. There is a high degree of professional achievement associated with those appointed to the role, but remember that your responsibilities go beyond that.
You should always be aware that you are an essential part of the company machine. Phoning it in, primarily if you work in a part-time capacity, won’t produce results.
Keep in mind that your duties will likely go beyond the baseline of chairing board meetings.
You’ll need to induct new board members, evaluate current ones, be available for shareholder queries, pay attention to diversity on your board, provide input to the remuneration committee, and represent the company wherever necessary.
Put aside time, thought, and energy for all the above.
Discover the three top tips for chairs below.
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What Is The Role Of The Chair?
Therefore, the chair is responsible for leading the board and focusing it on strategic matters, overseeing the company’s business, and setting high governance standards.
The chair plays a pivotal role in fostering the effectiveness of the board and individual directors, both inside and outside the board room.
This guide explores the role of the chair, the associated duties, and what to bear in mind when choosing someone for this role.
A good chair provides leadership to the board rather than the company
What is the role of the chair of the board?
The role of the chair involves ensuring the effectiveness of the board in implementing company strategy. This can be done through their role in chairing important meetings, determining the agenda and the nature of the information received by the board members.
Good data and information is crucial when it comes to the accurate decision-making of the board.
The role of chair of the board may be a full or part-time position. It can sometimes be combined with that of chief executive or managing director in smaller companies, although such a joint role would not be recommended for public companies.
Following the corporate scandals of previous decades, the chair can play a valuable role in keeping a check on the CEO. However, such division has also created problems where the chair may act as a second CEO, creating conflict between the roles.
It’s essential for an organisation to understand the differences between these two roles to maximise good governance and minimise friction and confusion among senior managers.
One difference is that a good chair provides leadership to the board rather than the company.
As the board’s leading representative, the chair presents its aims outside the boardroom. One of their duties involves providing a summary of discussions that can be agreed upon by the board.
The chair also makes sure that meetings are well ordered and helps facilitate good decision making.
In addition to the duties described above, the chair is also responsible for regularly reviewing the board’s composition, which is highly important for the effective running of the organisation.
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Essentially the role of the chair can be broken down as follows:
Leadership to the board
Responsibility for the composition and development of the organisation
Providing information to the board
Conducting board meetings
Involving and facilitating all directors in board meetings
Giving focus to the board on critical tasks
Reviewing the development and induction of directors
Support of the chief executive or managing director
The following list provides further detail on the duties of the chair:
The chair will set the board agenda, ensuring that directors receive accurate, timely and precise information to enable them to take accurate and authoritative decisions.
The chair will ensure that sufficient time is allowed for complex or contentious issues and encourage active engagement by all board members.
The chair should take the lead in ensuring that there is a formal induction programme for new directors. They should also make sure to address and resolve the various ongoing development needs of individual directors to ensure that they have a comprehensive understanding of what is required for them to fulfil their role on the board.
Evaluating the performance of each board member in their role as a director annually and ensuring that the board’s performance as a whole and its committees are evaluated annually.
Holding meetings with the non-executive directors without the executives being present.
Ensuring effective communication with shareholders and particularly that the company maintains contact with its principal shareholders on matters relating to strategy, governance and directors’ remuneration.
Ensuring that the views of shareholders are communicated to the board as a whole.
As chair of the nominations committee, initiating diversity, change and planning succession in board appointments (other than concerning the appointment of a successor as chair) following procedures agreed from time to time by the board.
Together with the chief executive, providing input to the remuneration committee concerning its recommendations to the board on the policy for the remuneration of the executive directors and its approval of the detailed terms of service of the executive directors and the company secretary.
In conjunction with the chief executive, representing the company to customers, suppliers, government, shareholders, financial institutions and the community.
We can see that the role of the chair is an essential one in ensuring good corporate governance and that they must act independently and be free of conflicts of interest.
It is helpful to choose someone for this role who possesses good organisational skills and will effectively review the involvement and coordination of board members.
It’s important to mention that the chair of a charity has no less importance than that of any other organisation, either private or public.
Charity trustees are the people who ultimately exercise control over, and are legally responsible for, the charity.
Each board of charity trustees should have a chairperson whose duties include:
Leading the board and providing ongoing leadership for the board and its appointees
Along with the company secretary, ensuring the smooth running of board meetings
Promoting good governance among fellow charity trustees
Providing supervision and support to the manager/CEO (where applicable)
Acting as a figurehead or spokesperson, where required
Airplane Mode: What Does It Really Do?
To follow with technology, the industry created something called “Airplane Mode” that’s used when you’re onboard a flight, obviously. However, have you ever wondered what exactly does “airplane mode” mean? How can you have your phone in that safe mode, yet also get WiFi onboard a flight?
What Airplane Mode Really Do
Electronic devices then started coming equipped with something called “Airplane Mode”. Sometimes it’s called something else, such as “Offline Mode”, but it’s still the same thing. What it does is disable the device from transmitting signals, while still allowing it to be used in other ways. While you won’t be able to text or send emails, you will be able to listen to music, take photos and play games that are standalone and work without transmitting signals. You can also write emails and texts and save them to send later when the Airplane Mode is turned off.
Most devices will show you that you’re in Airplane Mode in some way. The Apple iOS shows a little airplane in the upper left corner and can be accessed in the Settings menu. If you try to use the Internet, it asks you to either take it out of Airplane Mode or get under WiFi. Different devices and different services treat Airplane Mode differently. Some allow GPS and Bluetooth, while others do not. It would be worth it to check out your device before you fly to find out what will still work under Airplane mode and what won’t.
Confusing all of this even more is that many airlines are now offering a WiFi service onboard. And that is used while you’re in the Airplane Mode, which doesn’t initially seem to make sense. However, the airlines are using the Gogo service which has cellular towers across the U.S. The devices connect to the antenna on the plane, instead of antennas on the ground, which means they don’t interfere with the cell towers. Additionally, devices using the Gogo service WiFi transmit on a lower power, preventing interference with the signals the planes are submitting.
Does phone signal really crash the plane?Theoretically, electronic devices, including phones, computers, radio receivers will emit electromagnetic wave that could interfere with the plane navigational system, but in real life, there have not been any experiment or concrete proof that these electronic signals directly resulted in the crashing of the plane.
According to the Wikipedia, most, if not, all airlines still ban the use of cell phone on their planes simply because there are no conclusive safety tests to prove otherwise. There are no return in investment in conducting such tests, so for safety reasons, it is just best to disable the use of electronic devices. We are not discounting the fact that using of electronic devices could affect the plane, but is just that there is no concrete proof to say that using of mobile device is the sole culprit for crashing the plane. It is still best to switch your mobile phone to Airplane mode (or switch it off completely) since you can’t make any phone call with it at 30,000 feets above ground anyway.
There’s an additional reason to use the Airplane Mode as well, and it has nothing to do with air travel. Since Airplane Mode requires much less power to operate the device, it means it’s a good mode to switch to to save power if you’re running low on power and not needing to be using it for anything that would be transmitting signals.
Keep in mind that when flying, even though you put your device into Airplane Mode, when the flight attendants or captain announce that all electronic devices must be stored away, that means all of them whether they are in Airplane Mode or not. They will let you know when you can use them again, which is usually when they achieve a certain altitude or when they touch down again.
Image credit: Crashed Plane by Big Stock Photo.
Laura Tucker
Laura has spent nearly 20 years writing news, reviews, and op-eds, with more than 10 of those years as an editor as well. She has exclusively used Apple products for the past three decades. In addition to writing and editing at MTE, she also runs the site’s sponsored review program.
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Ibm Sees Across The Board Revenue Gains
Citing an increase in IT spending across all sectors of its business and all global geographies, IBM announced record revenue and earnings for the first quarter that exceeded analyst projections.
After the close of trading on Monday, IBM (NYSE: IBM) reported a first-quarter profit of $2.6 billion, or $1.97 per share, a 13 percent improvement from the $2.3 billion, or $1.70 per share, from the same quarter last year. Revenue rose 5 percent year-over-year to $22.9 billion.
Analysts on average had expected earnings per share of $1.93 on revenue of $22.7 billion, according to a consensus survey by Thomson Reuters.
However, while IBM CFO Mark Loughridge was optimistic about the overall economic climate during a conference call with analysts, he pointed out some of the more near-term indicators of strength for his company.
Total Global Services revenues increased 4 percent with $12.3 billion in services contracts signed, including 13 contracts greater than $100 million. Consulting services signings were up 18 percent, with 25 percent of signings related to Smarter Planet and Business Analytics.
IBM now has a services backlog of $134 billion at actual rates, compared with $126 billion in the first-quarter 2009.
The one real area of services weakness came in IBM’s Application Management Services group, where revenue fell 23 percent, or $700 million, over the same quarter last year. Loughridge’s explanation is that AMS had enjoyed a particularly strong quarter last year, so it was hard for the group to match it.
The better news, in his view, was that there was an 18 percent year-over-year growth in revenue from outsourcing and consulting, a service that’s often the first to be cut when belts are tightened.
“This is important because consulting has been a leading indicator and has the greatest impact on near term-performance,” Loughridge said. “We expect our services business to return to modest growth in the second quarter.”
Software revenues for IBM totaled $5.0 billion, an increase of 11 percent from a year ago. Among the best performers were Tivoli, up 23 percent, while WebSphere business was up 13 percent and information management was up 11 percent. Sales of ILOG software rose 30 percent from a year ago, thanks to its use in IBM’s Smarter Planet program.
Systems and Technology, IBM’s hardware business, delivered $3.4 billion of revenue for the quarter, up 5 percent year over year. It saw an 11 percent sequential improvement in hardware sales, in particular for storage, System x and the Power 7 mid-range. Loughridge said x86 blade sales rose 55 percent year-over year.
IBM continues to pursue HP and Sun customers, racking up another 170 competitive wins for $125 million in business for the quarter, Loughridge said. Most of that share came in low- to mid-range systems. He said that IBM will introduce the next-generation of its System z mainframes coming in the second half of the year as well as some new high-end System p computers running IBM’s new Power 7 processor.
Big Blue’s Global Financing segment revenues decreased 7 percent from last year to $537 million. Loughridge said that this quarter’s economics were driven more by business opportunities than currency. “With a strong dollar, currency was less of a help,” he said. Adjustments for the dollar only changed things by 5 percent instead of the usual 6 to 7 percent and impacted revenue by $250 million.
“So business was better than expected,” Loughridge said.
IBM said it now expects to earn $11.20 a share in 2010, up from its prior projections of $11 per share. Analysts had projected an average FY2010 EPS of $11.12 a share.
The company also said it expects constant-currency revenue growth for IBM and for its total services, software and hardware businesses in the second quarter.
Andy Patrizio is a senior editor at chúng tôi the news service of chúng tôi the network for technology professionals.
New York Board Of Trade (Nybot)
New York Board of Trade (NYBOT)
A physical commodity futures exchange located in New York City
Written by
CFI Team
Published June 18, 2023
Updated July 7, 2023
What is the New York Board of Trade (NYBOT)?Founded and established in 1870, the New York Board of Trade (NYBOT) is a physical commodity futures exchange. The NYBOT is located in New York City and trades futures and/or options on currencies, interest rates, market indexes, coffee, cotton, orange juice, cocoa, and sugar. It later became part of the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) in 2006.
In its earlier years of operation, the NYBOT made use of human traders to carry out commodities trading. The trades would be found on trading floors. Currently, a greater portion of NYBOT’s trades is conducted digitally and electronically via computers.
Summary
The New York Board of Trade is a physical commodity futures exchange.
The NYBOT is located in New York City and trades futures and/or options on currencies, interest rates, market indexes, coffee, cotton, orange juice, cocoa, and sugar.
Companies that trade on NYBOT employ brokers, and the brokers are sent to the trading floor to facilitate trades. On the trading floor, futures contracts are traded in order to purchase or sell currencies, commodities, and other instruments, at predetermined prices and predetermined dates in the future.
History of the NYBOTUpon being founded, the NYBOT’s trading was mainly conducted by humans. In 1997, the NYBOT acquired the Coffee, Sugar, and Cocoa Exchange (CSCE). The move increased their presence and position in the trading market. In 2006, ICE then purchased the joint entities. In 2007, the NYBOT was renamed to ICE Futures U.S. The NYBOT trading floor is regulated by the CFTC.
How the NYBOT WorksCompanies that trade on the NYBOT make use of brokers, and the brokers are sent to the trading floor to facilitate trades. On the trading floor, futures contracts are traded in order to purchase or sell currencies, commodities, and other instruments at predetermined prices and predetermined dates in the future.
It means that companies that are reliant on certain commodities can purchase them at predetermined prices for a future delivery date. The date can be in future weeks, months, or years. It gives companies the capacity to determine the cost of their raw materials.
The contracts are exchanged in a “trading room” (also referred to as a “trading pit”). The traders in the pit determine future rates in such fast-paced markets.
It is very important to remember that investors involved in the futures contracts are not buying the agricultural commodity but are rather trading the contracts which allow for control of the underlying asset. What is really exchanged is money (cash).
Importance of the NYBOTThe NYBOT provides a means for investors to achieve leverage. Futures and options contracts allow for the creation and deployment of leverage, which can result in either substantial wins or losses for the investors.
The NYBOT keeps a post margin requirement of 5%. The post margin is needed from the investor to make the trade. Hence, the investor only needs to pay 5% of the contract value to trade.
In addition, with the ability of traders to make use of market forces to reach realistic price expectations for certain commodities and other financial instruments, the NYBOT provides a means for smoothing market imbalances.
Finally, with the small post margin requirement, an investor is granted considerable control of an underlying asset. With prices that fluctuate quickly and higher than 5%, the investor only holds a small stake, thereby providing leverage.
The NYBOT in the Real WorldThe ICE, which acquired the NYBOT, currently functions and trades digitally and electronically via computers. It allows quick transactions and trades between market participants. The move, in conjunction and support of a new digital era, brought about an increase in market sizes and transactional volumes. Being an international marketplace, the ICE provides traders with a platform to trade in various commodities, ranging from agricultural commodities to derivative products.
Additional Resources
What Does The Padlock In My Browser’s Address Bar Mean?
Sometimes that little padlock in your browser’s address bar changes color, gets an extra symbol layered on top of it, or turns into text. Its basic function is pretty obvious: a normal padlock means the site is safe, while a warning symbol or message means it’s not safe, right? Actually, it’s a bit more complex than that, since the padlock only shows you whether your connection to the site is encrypted with HTTPS and doesn’t provide much insight at all into whether the site itself is legitimate and/or completely secure.
What the “secure” padlock tells youChrome/Chromium(
), Firefox(), Edge(), and Safari() all have slightly different versions of the “safe” padlock, but they’re all telling you basically the same thing: this site has received an SSL certificate and is encrypting the data it sends you and the data you send back using HTTPS. That means anyone intercepting your traffic won’t be able to see what you’re doing on the site, which is especially important when you’re doing things like entering credit card numbers or personally identifiable information.
), Firefox(), Edge(), and Safari() all have slightly different versions of the “safe” padlock, but they’re all telling you basically the same thing: this site has received an SSL certificate and is encrypting the data it sends you and the data you send back using HTTPS. That means anyone intercepting your traffic won’t be able to see what you’re doing on the site, which is especially important when you’re doing things like entering credit card numbers or personally identifiable information.
In a word, a normal padlock icon lets you know that you’re safely connected to the correct site.
What the “secure” padlock doesn’t tell youFor those of you not up to speed on SSL certificates, they’re digital proofs that the site you’re visiting was registered with a certificate authority by the person or company that owns the site. These entities can opt to pay for a more expensive certificate (an “Extended Validation” or “EV” certificate) that checks to make sure they really are who they say they are (e.g., chúng tôi is owned by the chúng tôi corporation), but pretty much anyone can get their hands on a normal SSL certificate for free without proving anything beyond their ownership of the site.
So while your connection to the site is safe from prying eyes, the site could easily be run by someone sketchy who will take all your safely-transmitted data and do whatever they want with it. Even if the website is being honestly run, though, an encrypted connection means nothing if one of the parties receiving the data is compromised. HTTPS only covers data while it’s being transmitted, so if it gets to the other end and gets stored on a server with poor security or some other fatal flaw, it’s vulnerable.
Bottom line: the padlock means you’re on a safe connection, not a safe website.
All those other padlock symbolsWhile pretty much every browser uses some form of a closed gray padlock to denote an encrypted connection, different browsers show you different icons depending on what issues they detect on the site you’re visiting. Here are a few you should know:
Chrome Firefox
The yellow triangle () can mean two things: either the website is partially encrypted (meaning it uses HTTPS but some of the content is coming from an HTTP connection and could be manipulated), or the certificate authority isn’t trusted (meaning the site is using encryption, but its certificate seems shady).
The red bar () means the site is being delivered over an insecure connection (like HTTP), and you shouldn’t send any sensitive information.
EdgeWhile this may change once Edge goes Chromium, Edge’s current system is to display the outline of a padlock (
) when the connection is secured, a filled green padlock () when the site is using an extended validation certificate, and an “i” () when the connection has some sort of problem, such as with an HTTP connection or mixed HTTP and HTTPS content.
Safari) when the connection is secured, a filled green padlock () when the site is using an extended validation certificate, and an “i” () when the connection has some sort of problem, such as with an HTTP connection or mixed HTTP and HTTPS content.
Safari’s padlock icon (
) like Edge’s, will turn green () if there’s an extended validation certificate. If the connection is not encrypted, you’ll see a “Not Secure” message instead.
The changing faces of the padlock) like Edge’s, will turn green () if there’s an extended validation certificate. If the connection is not encrypted, you’ll see a “Not Secure” message instead.
For quite a long time, most browsers made the padlock a pleasant green color as an indication that the site you were visiting was standing out from the rest by following good security practices. Now, however, HTTPS has basically become the standard, with over fifty percent of the top million sites using it, and the lock has gone gray to indicate that sites that use it aren’t really that special – they’re just upholding the standard.
In the future, Chrome may actually remove the padlock altogether and only notify users when the site is insecure, as a good webpage should be using HTTPS anyway. Even if your page doesn’t process any sensitive information, Google’s search algorithm rewards sites that use encryption, so it’s in every site owner’s best interest to set up an SSL certificate. It might not be a user’s first instinct to check for a padlock, but if they ever see something odd or a warning message in the address bar, they’ll probably think twice before entering any information.
Image credits: SSL (Simple)
Andrew Braun
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