Stephen Davis, Ph.D. is Executive
Director at Yale University School of Management's Millstein Center
for Corporate Governance and Performance and Lecturer on the SOM
faculty.
Dr. Davis co-authored (with Jon
Lukomnik and David Pitt-Watson)
The New Capitalists: How Citizen
Investors are Reshaping the Corporate Agenda (Harvard Business
School Press, 2006), which was 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. He is also a contributor to
Corporate Governance in the Wake of the Financial Crisis (UNCTAD,
2011) and The Origins of Shareholder Advocacy (Palgrave Macmillan,
2011).
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. Named
by Directorship as among the 100 most influential figures in
corporate governance, and by Competia as among 'the most
influential corporate governance tweeters,' Davis is a Fellow of
the Royal Society for the Arts.
Davis pioneered the field of
international corporate governance when he founded the global 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. Dr. Davis is a
co-founder of the International Corporate Governance Network, and
was its representative to the OECD. Dr. Davis was a member of the
UNEP steering group which produced global Principles for
Responsible Investment and Policy Network's working group on
economic reform. He co-founded GovernanceMetrics International.
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.
Davis served on the US SEC's Investor
Advisory Committee, where he chaired the Investor as Owner
Subcommittee. He is a board member and former chair of Hermes EOS,
the shareowner engagement arm of Hermes Pensions Management, the
UK's largest retirement fund; Co-Chair of the board of
shareowners.org; Member of the International Advisory Board of NYSE
Euronext; 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 and Member of the Private Sector
Advisory Group of the Global Corporate Governance Forum. Davis is
President of consultant Davis Global Advisors and founder-editor of
the Global Proxy Newsletter