Stephen Davis, Ph.D. is a senior fellow at the Harvard Law School Program on Corporate Governance and was founding chair of the Oversight Committee overseeing the global proxy voting industry’s Best Practices Principles for Shareholder Voting Research. He co-chairs the Advisory Board of Hawkamah, the corporate governance institute based in the UAE; served on the founding supervisory board of Stewardship Professionals e.V. (StePs); and is a co-founder of the Capital+Constitution project sponsored by the Brookings Institution and States United Democracy Center.
Davis pioneered the field of international corporate governance in 1989 when he founded the Global Shareholder Services unit at the IRRC, in Washington, DC. His Shareholder Rights Abroad: A Handbook for the Global Investor (1989) was the first study comparing corporate governance practices in top markets. Davis has been a nonresident senior fellow in governance at the Brookings Institution, where he co-directed the World Forum on Governance; a senior advisor on governance at Teneo; and outside advisor to the Nissan Special Committee on Improving Governance. From 2007-2012 he was executive director of the Yale School of Management’s Millstein Center for Corporate Governance and Performance and Lecturer on the SOM faculty. Davis is co-author of What They Do With Your Money: How the Financial System Fails Us, and How to Fix It (Yale University Press, 2016), an Amazon bestseller in the US and UK among books on financial services, and The New Capitalists: How Citizen Investors are Reshaping the Corporate Agenda (Harvard Business School Press, 2006), named by the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times and Australian Financial Review as one of the best business books of 2006. He is a member of the World Economic Forum’s Expert Group on Active Investor Stewardship.
US SEC Chair Mary Schapiro named Davis to the Commission’s Investor Advisory Committee, and chair of its Investor as Owner Subcommittee. He has been nonexecutive chair of the board of Hermes EOS, the shareowner engagement arm of Hermes Pensions Management, the UK’s largest retirement fund, and a trustee of ShareAction, the London-based NGO focused on institutional investor accountability. Davis is a co-founder of many institutions that now comprise the global corporate governance architecture including the International Corporate Governance Network, the UN Principles for Responsible Investment, Chairmen’s Forums in North America and South Africa, the Conference of Fund Leaders, the (US) Systemic Risk Council, GMI Ratings (now part of MSCI), and Global Proxy Watch newsletter, for more than 25 years the prime industry resource for ESG insights worldwide.
In the academic world, besides at Harvard and Yale, Davis has served as a visiting professor in corporate governance at the IAE business school of Aix-Marseille University, and was named a Distinguished Visiting Researcher at the American University in Cairo. He has been a member of the advisory boards of the Centre for Corporate Governance in Africa at University of Stellenbosch Business School and the Center for Corporate Governance at Handelshochschule Leipzig; and he has been an advisor to the corporate governance project at Alfaisal University School of Business in Riyadh. Elsewhere, Davis has been a member of the Advisory Board of Arkadiko Partners in London; senior advisor on the European Commission’s ESG investor training project; member of the Advisory Council of the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board; member of the World Economic Forum Global Agenda Council on the Future of Long Term Investing; Member of the Contributing Committee of Development Partners International; Member of the advisory board of Cartica Capital; member of the Private Sector Advisory Group of the Global Corporate Governance Forum; and member of the MSCI Thought Leaders Council.
Winner of the 2011 ICGN Award for Excellence in Corporate Governance, Davis authored the seminal “Mobilizing Ownership: An Agenda for Corporate Renewal”, published by Brookings in May 2012. Davis contributed to Corporate Governance in the Wake of the Financial Crisis (UNCTAD, 2011), The Origins of Shareholder Advocacy (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), and The Cambridge Handbook of Institutional Investment and Fiduciary Duty (Cambridge University Press, 2014). His co-authored Are Institutional Investors Part of the Problem or Part of the Solution? (Committee for Economic Development, Yale SOM Millstein Center, 2011) catalyzed Columbia Law School’s database Project on Investment, Ownership and Control in the Modern Firm.
Davis co-chaired The Conference Board’s Working Group on Hedge Funds and served on the US National Association of Corporate Directors’ Blue Ribbon Commission on board-shareholder communications. He has testified at US congressional hearings, been a columnist for the Financial Times and Compliance Week, and is a frequent media commentator on corporate governance. He has been named by Directorship as among the 100 most influential figures in corporate governance and by Trust Across America as among the Top 100 Thought Leaders in Trustworthy Business Behavior. Davis is a Fellow of the Royal Society for the Arts. Through Davis Global Advisors, Inc., Davis provides research and advice to capital market parties.
Dr. Davis earned his doctorate in international business and security studies at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, and completed undergraduate studies at Tufts and the London School of Economics. Other books include Apartheid’s Rebels: Inside South Africa’s Hidden War (Yale University Press, 1987), which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.
Contact Information:
+1 617 495 5702 (o)
+1 617 230 2277 (m-US)
+33 [0]6 75 54 36 67 (m-EU)
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
https://pcg.law.harvard.edu/stephen-m-davis
Book Publications:
What They Do With Your Money: How the Financial System Fails Us, and How to Fix It
With Jon Lukomnik and David Pitt-Watson
(Yale University Press, 2016)
The Cambridge Handbook of Institutional Investment and Fiduciary Duty
(Cambridge University Press, 2014)
Contributor
Corporate Governance in the Wake of the Financial Crisis
(UNCTAD, 2011).
Contributor, with Jon Lukomnik and David Pitt-Watson.
The Origins of Shareholder Advocacy
(Palgrave Macmillan, 2011).
Contributor.
Shareholder Rights at 400: Commemorating Isaac Le Maire and the First Recorded Expression of Investor Advocacy
(The Hague: Remix Business Communications, 2009).
Editor.
The New Capitalists: How Citizen Investors are Reshaping the Corporate Agenda
with Jon Lukomnik and David Pitt-Watson
(Harvard Business School Press, 2006).
[Nominated by HBSP for the FT/Goldman Sachs Award. Named by the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times and Australian Financial Review as one of the best business books of 2006. The book has been translated into Japanese, Portuguese, Complex Chinese and Korean.]
Global Voting: Shareholder Decisions
(Washington, DC: IRRC, 1992).
The Impact of Sanctions on South Africa: Whites’ Attitudes
(Washington, DC: IRRC, 1990).
Co-author.
Shareholder Rights Abroad: A Handbook for the Global Investor
(Washington, DC: IRRC, 1989).
Apartheid’s Rebels: Inside South Africa’s Hidden War
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987), (Johannesburg: A.D. Donker, 1988).
[Nominated by Yale University Press for the Pulitzer Prize.]
Selected Articles, Testimony, and Papers
Countering Corruption: 2012 Conference Report from the World Forum on Governance
with Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein
Brookings Institution, March 2013.
Mobilizing Ownership: An Agenda for Corporate Renewal
Issues in Governance, May 2012.
Are Institutional Investors Part of the Problem or Part of the Solution?
with Ben Heineman, Jr.
Committee for Economic Development and Yale School of Management–Millstein Center for Corporate Governance and Performance, September 2011.
Active Shareowner Stewardship: A New Paradigm for Capitalism
with Jon Lukomnik and David Pitt-Watson
International Journal of Pension Management, Fall 2009.
Towards and Accountable Capitalism
with Jon Lukomnik and David Pitt-Watson
Tomorrow’s Capitalism monograph, Institute for Public Policy Research, April 2009.
Towards and Accountable Capitalism
with Jon Lukomnik and David Pitt-Watson
Private Sector Opinion (No. 13), April 2009. Publication of the International Finance Corp./Global Corporate Governance Forum.
A Responsibility for Profit: How Investors are Driving the CSR Agenda
with David Pitt-Watson
in Whose Responsibility: The Role of Business in Delivering Social and Environmental Change. (London: The Smith Institute, 2006).
The Capitalist Manifesto: Managing the Rise of Citizen Investors
with Jon Lukomnik and David Pitt-Watson
ChangeThis.com (November 2006).
Mobilizing Ownership
Mainstreaming Responsible Investment, World Economic Forum and AccountAbility (Jan. 2005).
Mobilizing Ownership—The Civil Economy Agenda
0.618 (UNEP-Jan. 2005).
“Re-Inventing Enterprise: The First and Next Decades of the Global Corporate Governance Revolution”
in Mats Isaksson and Rolf Skog, editors, The Future of Corporate Governance (Stockholm 2004).
“Big Bang”
Superfunds (Australia) (October 2004).
“Rating Corporate Governance”
in Lu Tong, editor, Corporate Governance Reform: International Experience and China’s Practice (Beijing, 2004).
International Trends in Corporate Governance
in Corporate Governance: A Guide to Corporate Accountability (Institutional Investor, 2003).
The Civil Economy
versions in Renewal (UK) (Jan. 2004); Progressive Politics (UK) (July 2003); Convergence (South Africa) (Vol. 4 No. 2); Corporate Ownership and Control(Ukraine) (Vol. 1 No. 1); Company Director (Australia) (May 2003); Empresa (Spanish language-Argentina) (Autumn 2004); Perspectiva (Spanish language-Colombia) (2005); and in The Business Case for Democracy (Center for International Private Enterprise, Washington DC, 2004). It also forms the central part of an economic reform paper presented to Policy Network in Brussels in June 2004 and later published in Economic Reform in Europe: Priorities for the Next Five Years(Policy Network).
“The Race for Global Corporate Governance”
in Corporate Governance Reform: China and the World (Economic Management Publishing House, 2002).
“Strategies for Global Corporate Governance”
in LOW Chee Keung, ed., Corporate Governance: Theory and Practice (2002).
“Global Governance Standards”
in Offshore Fund Directors 1999 (Fitzrovia, Crédit Agricole Indosuez).
“Bridging the Accountability Gap”
in Theodor Baum, ed. Shareholder Voting in Europe (Kluwer, 1999).
“The Race for Global Corporate Governance”
Economic Reform Today (Center for International Private Enterprise), (Number One, 1999).
“Corporate Governance Compared”
in Takashi Aihara, ed. What’s Expected of Japanese Industry: International Shareholder Activism and Japan’s Response, (Tokyo: Chuo Kezei Sha, Spring 1999).
“Corporate Governance: Comparative Indicators”
in Alice Pezard and Jean-Marie Thiveaud, eds. Corporate Governance: Les Perspectives Internationales (Paris: Montchrestien and Association d’Économie Financière, 1997).
“Global Governance Standards”
Company Secretary (Hong Kong) (October 1997).
“The Accountability Gap”
International Corporate Governance Newsletter (May 1997).
“In Search of the Global Board”
The Corporate Board: The Journal of Corporate Governance (January/February 1997).
“Shareholder Voting in Europe”
co-authored with the Centre for European Policy Studies, Brussels, November 1996.
“French Corporate Governance: An International Comparison”
study commissioned by the SBF Paris Bourse, June 1996.
“Global Corporate Governance and Proxy Voting”
Insight (Winter 1995-’96).
“Economic Sanctions”
in Christopher Kruegler, ed. Encyclopedia of Nonviolent Action (Cambridge, Mass: Albert Einstein Institution, 1996).
“Shareholders and Executive Pay Around the World”
study commissioned by H.M. Treasury, London, Feb. 1995.
“International Corporate Governance: Proxy Voting Goes Global”
The Corporate Governance Advisor, August/Sept. 1993.
“Moscow Stock Exchanges Flounder”
Global Shareholder News (Spring 1991).
“Economic Pressure on South Africa: Does it Work?”
in George W. Shepherd, Jr., ed. Effective Sanctions on South Africa (Greenwood Press, 1991).
“South Africa’s Season of War”
in Barry Schutz and Robert O. Slater, ed. Revolution and Political Change: Patterns of Insurgency in the Third World (Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1991).
“Toward a New U.S. Policy on Southern Africa”
Hearings before the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations on U.S. Policy Toward South Africa, June 23, 1988.
“Revolt on the Veldt”
co-author, Harper’s magazine (cover story), December 1983. Finalist for the 1983 Livingstone Awards.
