Furthering its work as a focal point for international scholarship and business engagement, FIU Business joined with the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Bangalore’s Center for Corporate Governance and Citizenship to present the inaugural Corporate Governance conference, held June 14-15, 2019 at IIM Bangalore.
The two-day event brought together 80 leaders in from the fields of finance, corporate governance, leadership and strategy. Featuring an interdisciplinary approach, the conference addressed critical corporate governance issues with participants from India and the U.S.
“The conference was a spectacular success,” said Krishnan Dandapani, director of India programs for FIU Business. “High-level participants brought key insights to general sessions and panels on issues in technology.”
“The world economy is transition,” Dandapani said. “The countries that are emerging – China, India, and the U.S. – are all going through systematic changes in corporate governance. How do we move forward? That was the basic theme.”
The conference was structured along five themes: Board Quality; Board Composition, Compensation and Structure; Board Gender Diversity; Board Operating Environment; and Board Effectiveness. Two industry workshops on Diversity of Boards and the Impact of Technology and Automation on Data Security and Data Privacy were put together by Bangalore IT tech managers.
“We had chairs of the four major Indian banks in attendance,” he said. In addition, “Bangalore is known for its IT sector, and the industry panels were well received.”
Furthering the internationalization of business education.
“We hold a bedrock belief in the importance of the internationalization of business education,” said FIU Business Dean Joanne Li, who addressed the Bangalore conference via video. “We strive to build strategic relationships to advance the work of top scholars in the global business community. Our focus on India and on Asia-Pacific is central and critical to this work.”
“We face a common question: How can we be better, more effective, more inclusive leaders?” Li said. “How can we create, incent and support structures that reinforce our goals?”
Five faculty members and one PhD student received financial support from Dean Li’s Ryder Eminent Scholar Chair endowment to travel to Bangalore and were hosted by IIM Bangalore: Qiang Kang, Arun Upadhyay, Ravi Gajendran, Danielle Combs, Suchi Mishra and finance doctoral student Dung Nguyen.
At FIU, in the weeks before the conference, the FIU Business professors attending the conference met with Raj Singh, chair of BankUnited, who engaged with the FIU researchers and discussed their findings on corporate governance. He also delivered a videotaped greeting to the conference.
Both Li and Dandapani expressed hope that the conference would become an annual event. “There was tremendous excitement to do it again next year,” he said. Discussions are now moving forward to hold a second conference in 2020.
The following papers were selected for the inaugural Corporate Governance conference at Bangalore.
“Does Poor Governance Cause Corporate Distress? An Agnostic Assessment” – Qiang Kang
“Does Heterogeneity of Female Director’s Experience Matter? Evidence from M& A” – Arun Upadhyay
“Boards as Virtual Teams: The Negative Implications of Geographical Dispersion on Board Effectiveness” – Ravi Gajendran
“Chairman’s Independence and Firm’s Mergers and Acquisition Performance” – Dung Nguyen
“Board Member’s Financial Background: A Case of Practice and Research Divergence” – Aya Chacar, D. Combs and S. Terjesen
“Does Board Independence Reduce Informed Short selling prior to Earnings Announcements?” – Suchi Mishra
