NEDs – The Unlisted Board

The Most Successful Startup/GrowthCo Governance Model – The Concentrated-Control Company

By The Unlisted Board|2021-11-25T11:53:33+00:00November 25th, 2021|The Board - Theory and Practice, The CEO/Founder, The Chairman, NEDs, Capital Providers, Company Governance History, Longer Articles, Realpolitik Extracts|

Monumental misunderstandings about what is the best governance model for Startups/Scaleups/GrowthCos - indeed the whole unlisted company pathway to Trade Sale or IPO - are common. The first as we have covered (eg Guide to the Core Essence of the Entrepreneurial Board) is to not design your Board but let it be something that "just happens" or is imposed upon you. Good luck with that. The second is to misunderstand what type of Governance is best for Unlisted Companies. In a nutshell this is roughly the exact opposite of the "Corporate Governance" model of the US/UK et al in

A Brief History Of NEDs – From Zero via Guinea-Pig to being the Gods Of Governance

By The Unlisted Board|2021-10-14T13:58:44+01:00October 12th, 2021|NEDs, Company Governance History, Regulation Then and Now, Longer Articles|

In the prior article we looked at how the VOC, the Dutch East India Company, shareholders waged a twenty-year campaign to get some influence on the governance of the business that their funds had created and ended up importing an abbreviated version of the EIC, the English East India Company's two-tier Board. An episode so forgotten over the intervening centuries that business schools these days teach that two-tier Boards reflect "continental" attitudes to Governance in comparison to the allegedly Anglo-Saxon single-tier Board. It is at times like those that I look to the title of a book on my shelf

A Super-Valuable Board Book – “Directors’ Dilemmas” Patrick Dunne (270pp, 2000)

By The Unlisted Board|2021-08-12T14:07:23+01:00August 19th, 2021|The Board - Theory and Practice, The CEO/Founder, The Chairman, NEDs, Capital Providers, Fixing Broken Boards, Company Governance History, Book Reviews, Longer Articles|

This book is a must-buy second hand guide for any serious Chairmen, CEOs, Founders, NEDs or Investment Directors. The various editions are now out of print but it’s a steal at less than £5 second-hand right now (eg Amazon or AbeBooks). Different editions are variously subtitled “Tips and Techniques for Dealing with Day-to-day Problems” or “Tales from the frontline” both of which are equally descriptive. Patrick Dunne was at the time Group Communications Director at 3i, then Europe's leading venture capital company and wrote three Board books over a decade (interestingly after a gap of over a decade in 2019

New Board Guide – The Complex CEO-Chairman Relationship

By The Unlisted Board|2021-08-12T09:28:14+01:00August 3rd, 2021|The Board - Theory and Practice, The CEO/Founder, The Chairman, NEDs, Capital Providers, Short Articles|

The Fourth Short Guide to Key Aspects of the Unlisted Board is now out! A good Chairman was appreciated as a real asset by every interviewee that had one. There are plenty of formal definitions of the role of the Chairman. However templates, no matter how worthy, are always cookie-cutter. Size, stage, phase, type of company, sector, personalities, country will mean that for the far-less-systematised unlisted Board no single recipe will be The Answer. The realpolitik of the Boardroom is that it is all ultimately about who has power or in other terms control. Somewhere along the journey from NewCo

Never Hire “Just A NED” – Hire One Of These Nine Types Of NED

By The Unlisted Board|2021-07-30T12:25:53+01:00July 30th, 2021|NEDs, Longer Articles, Realpolitik Extracts|

<Extract from Chapter 7 of Realpolitik “NEDs”> Never hire “just a NED” – hire a certain type of NED that fills a gap for your Company and your Board. We take a look at nine types of NED – which do you have? Which don’t you have that you would like to have? What do you want from your NEDs? ... “Where is the value-add? Intros? Mentoring? Raise capital with you?” “Don’t just put anyone on the Board – people see it as a status symbol.” The most important aspect is to build a balanced team on the Board: “On

You Never Buy “A Fruit” So Never Hire “A NED”

By The Unlisted Board|2021-07-23T11:59:05+01:00October 15th, 2020|NEDs, Longer Articles, Realpolitik Extracts|

You never buy "a fruit" so never hire "a NED". The Engine of Growth Board will be designed to complement the skill set of the executive team, to fill in gaps. This can be a challenge in itself if you have a super-controlling VC who sees the Board as a mere vehicle for them to maximise their control and not actually to improve the Company. But that's a separate topic for another day - the simple summary being that VCs don't just come "with money" but as "a package" and you need to be savvy enough to compare packages, or