Public Board Members- Are they providing value?

The Initial Data Offering (IDO) community is a place for data enthusiasts to discover new datasets daily.

The mission is to build a community of data enthusiasts and curate high-quality, unique datasets for businesses, researchers, and organizations worldwide.

Public board members should be providing value. They should bring expertise. They should bring perspective. They should help across technology, innovation, growth, legal, compliance, tax, etc. Analyzing a public board is something many investors do, especially active hedge funds.

When I worked in the hedge fund space we leveraged a lot of unique datasets to dive deep into board members and the makeup of boards. What questions did we look to better understand?

• How many board members are there?

• What is the age of the board members?

• What is the diversity of the board? (This is a topic for another day)

• How much are board members paid?

• What other boards does the board member sit on? Are there conflicts potentially?

• What committees are the board members on and are they meeting their obligations?

• Do the board members bring value to the company and if so how?

• How many days a year is the board member golfing? (This was more important if they were not just a board member, but a member of the management team.)

One thing I think a lot of boards are missing in the data and information services space is younger, innovative board members. Where are the board members under the age of 50 or 40?

In addition to age, I think we are missing a great opportunity to have the largest buyers of data on the boards. Or people who come from the industry, worked at a data vendor, and bring perspective from another firm. Some of the most innovative, cutting-edge firms when it comes to using data work at hedge funds on data teams. I think it is time to see some of these leaders on public boards. Many of these people also work at some of the most successful data & information services firms from Factset, Bloomberg, and S&P. There are young, successful, innovative people at these firms or who have worked at these firms that can bring real perspective and change.

I wonder why haven’t we seen these people on public boards. Why haven’t we seen these companies creating special advisory committees of these younger leaders to help guide these companies in the right direction?

Two companies I have written about lately, Value Line and Global Data, are glaring examples in my mind of companies that have a need for a board refresh. They have opportunities, some big, and some small, but some real opportunities to grow, broaden their awareness, innovate, and scale. What is it going to take for change? Activists likely aren’t interested as the companies are small or the ownership is too concentrated. But there are others in this space that have similar opportunities.

From an outside perspective, the opportunity is obvious. The question is, which of the public companies are going to make some change?