Who Sits on Texas Corporate Boards? Texas Corporate Directors: Who They are & What They Do

Abstract

Corporate directors play an important role in governing American business, in the capital formation process, and are key to the stewardship of economic growth. Texas businesses play a disproportionately important role among the states in aggregate U.S. job creation, responsible for 37% of all net new American jobs since the post 2008-2009 recovery began. It is the job of the board of directors to govern the corporation. The duties and responsibilities of a corporate director include: the duty of care; duty of loyalty; and duty of good faith. This paper results from the author’s previously assembled biographical data for most of the approximately 20,000 for-profit corporate directors serving on the boards of Texas companies. Corporate directors are among the most influential and affluent individuals in our society. Many present or former chief executive officers are sought to serve on corporate boards due to their expertise and experience overseeing corporations. The average age of Texas directors of for-profit entities is fifty-seven years old; and only about six percent of corporate directors in Texas are women. Texas corporate directors are highly educated: over ninety-nine percent are college graduates: eighty percent hold advanced college degrees; twenty-eight percent have law degrees; and twenty percent of Texas corporate directors hold an MBA degree. Most Texas corporate directors serve the banking and finance sector (thirty-nine percent), next largest is the energy sector (at eighteen percent), and technology companies account for nine percent. Most boards look to recruit someone who understands their business and former CEOs are preferable. Every public company board of directors must now have an audit committee comprised of entirely independent directors, and each publicly-traded company is required to have at least one qualified “financial expert” on its audit committee. Therefore, public company auditing experience, along with a growing recognition that every board needs expertise to govern the enterprises’ information technology - have become “must have” skills represented on every board.