Introduction

The independent director (and, by extension, the independent chairman) has one of the most important jobs in business today. Over the past twenty years, a series of government and industry reports in the United Kingdom (UK) and the United States of America (USA) have focused a great deal of attention on the role of the independent director. Those reports, and that attention, have come in response to a series of industry and corporate scandals, the latest being the banking crisis of 2008. Subsequent codes of corporate governance around the world have laid more duties and responsibilities on the shoulders of independent directors, who now bear frontline responsibility for ensuring good corporate governance and accountability.