Nvidia's board presents further potential for improvement, in the opinion of Nell Minow, vice chair of corporate governance specialists ValueEdge Advisors. Of the 12 individuals on the $2.93 trillion company’s board, only one cites experience in “corporate governance” in their official biography (although some of the others have served on other boards).
Minow also wants to see Nvidia ticking off the corporate to-do list by updating the market on a successor to the CEO. After all, CEOs can’t lead forever.
A push for transparency is needed across the market, says Aalap Shah, managing director at Pearl Meyer.
Some of the pillars of American commerce have already learned this lesson: Just ask JPMorgan’s Jamie Dimon, who has been open about the banking behemoth’s succession planning process—even naming his “hit-by-a-bus CEO.”
“We should be significantly more transparent than we are currently about succession planning,” Shah tells Fortune. “From my perspective for an incoming CEO … one of the top five things they should be doing is succession planning because that is a company that is truly looking at the future and is appropriately considering corporate governance.”
“When succession planning is not transparent and thoughtfully considered you have to make rash decisions, and from a shareholder and investor perspective, that is what causes volatility,” Shah added.