An Independent Director (also sometimes known as a outside director or non-executive director) is a director (member) of a board of directors who does not have a material or pecuniary relationship with company or related persons, except sitting fees. Independent Directors do not own shares in the company. (Some sources state non-executive directors are different from independent ones in that non-executive director are allowed to hold shares in the firm while independent directors are not. In the US, independent outsiders make up 66% of all boards and 72% of S&P 500 company boards, according to The Wall Street Journal.
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Famous quotes containing the words independent and/or director:
“[My father] was a lazy man. It was the days of independent incomes, and if you had an independent income you didn’t work. You weren’t expected to. I strongly suspect that my father would not have been particularly good at working anyway. He left our house in Torquay every morning and went to his club. He returned, in a cab, for lunch, and in the afternoon went back to the club, played whist all afternoon, and returned to the house in time to dress for dinner.”
—Agatha Christie (1891–1976)
“When General Motors has to go to the bathroom ten times a day, the whole country’s ready to let go. You heard of that market crash in ‘29? I predicted that.... I was nursing a director of General Motors. Kidney ailment, they said; nerves, I said. Then I asked myself, “What’s General Motors got to be nervous about?” “Overproduction,” I says. “Collapse.””
—John Michael Hayes (b. 1919)