There are three problems when it comes to managing the board of directors and keeping track of officers.
The answer to all three questions is the same: move from a pile of corporate files to an entity management solution.
Businesses which have more than one legal entity typically assign the same group of people to serve as officers and directors of each entity.
Each person serves a different combination of entities and in a variety of roles. This table shows some of the combinations that might occur with just three entities (ParentCo, SubCo1, and SubCo2) and five people:
Person | Director | Officer |
---|---|---|
Jane | ParentCo, SubCo1, SubCo2 | ParentCo, SubCo1, SubCo2 |
Joe | ParentCo | N/A |
Yasmina | N/A | ParentCo, SubCo1, SubCo2 |
Paolo | SubCo1, SubCo2 | ParentCo, SubCo1, SubCo2 |
Yao | SubCo1 | SubCo1, SubCo2 |
To generate a meaningful report of the roles each person serves it is important to link the person to the entity in a data-driven solution.
There are lots of reasons you might ask who was on the board during a certain period of time. Or you might need to know who was on the management team a decision was made in response to litigation.
To show who served on the board of directors during a period of time, you need to track the terms of service for each director. With that information, you can simply ask “Who was on the board between these two dates?”
To reveal everyone on the board of directors in 2015, you might show the following:
Entity is ParentCo, Inc. AND Start Date is before 1/1/2015 AND End Date is after 12/1/2015
Person | Start Date | End Date |
---|---|---|
Jane | 5/12/2012 | N/A |
Joe | 3/24/2014 | N/A |
Samuel | 2/2/2011 | 5/1/2016 |
There are, of course, many variations of this query. The point is that maintaining the terms of service for officers and directors enables quick analysis and avoids lengthy document reviews to find basic information.
Sometimes it is important to track people or organizations involved in corporate governance. Examples include:
It is helpful to keep these “other” people linked to the legal entity record for quick reference.
The fix for these three problems is to move from a document-based legal entity management to data-driven entity management. Instead of digging through years of corporate documents and history, click a few buttons to find what you need about officers and directors. Demonstrate more value and manage legal risk more effectively.
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