Nonexecs prepared to be unpopular are needed on banking boards
London — Banks need to recruit a wider assortment of nonexecutive directors to their boards to end the kind of "group think" that lay behind the financial crisis, a senior British legislator said on Wednesday. Nonexecutive directors failed to ask bank bosses tough questions before the 2007-09 crisis, said Nicky Morgan, who was elected as chairperson of Parliament’s treasury select committee in July, and that remains an issue today. "It’s getting the right people on boards, asking the tough questions, to be unpopular with their executive officers," Morgan told a Resolution Foundation think tank meeting to debate whether UK banking had changed since the crisis. Companies hire nonexecutives from the same mould as existing members, the former minister for women and equalities said. "There is still far too much recruitment in the board’s own image," said Morgan, a member the governing Conservative party. The treasury select committee drove through regulatory changes after the crisis, and...
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