Boardroom Perspectives:
AlixTalks With Dambisa Moyo
With Dambisa Moyo, author of The Edge of Chaos, and Simon Freakley,
Chief Executive Officer, AlixPartners
00:07 | Simon Freakley
Dambisa, I'd love to now talk about your perspective from the boardroom.
00:10 | Dambisa Moyo
Yes.
00:11 | Simon Freakley
So, Dambisa, you're on the boards of Barclays, Chevron, also Barrack Gold, you've recently just
come off the board of SAB Miller before it was sold to InBev. You've clearly seen a number of
big challenges from different perspectives. What do you see as being some of the common
challenges and what can we learn from your perspectives?
00:30 | Dambisa Moyo
So, I think there are basically four key areas that are critically important for the boardroom
today.
One is this issue of a broader utility function. So, traditionally companies were focused on
maximizing shareholder value full stop, but now we think about maximizing shareholder value,
but also being a good citizen, looking at issues around climate change, thinking about income
inequality and many of the other macroeconomies economic issues that are pervading global
society today.
A second issue is the role and the increase in the number of activists in companies. My sense
is that no company is too big or too complex to have an activist, and so the consequences of
activism in shareholders and specifically to the boardroom I think has become a very big
issue.
Geopolitics is the third issue that I would argue in the past years, I've been on these boards for
about ten years, in years past it wasn't really a central issue. Today, it absolutely is one of
concern as we think about moving from a globalized world and one in which democracy, and
liberal democracy in particular, were sort of the dominant feature, but now we're seeing the
rise of illiberal democracies as well as authoritarian states. And so now we think about how
does business protect its margin, how do businesses compete in possibly a new world order?
And then finally, it's obviously the increase in regulation. Many sectors from pharmaceuticals,
banking, airlines have essentially become oligopolies. They have very few players in the
industries, and so the role of regulation, whether it's around privacy, it's around too big to fail,
has become another central theme in these boards.