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:
“Women, because of their colonial relationship to men, have to fight for their own independence. This fight for our own independence will lead to the growth and development of the revolutionary movement in this country. Only the independent woman can be truly effective in the larger revolutionary struggle.”
—Women’s Liberation Workshop, Students for a Democratic Society, Radical political/social activist organization. “Liberation of Women,” in New Left Notes (July 10, 1967)
“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)