Corporate Boards
As of 2004, Kean was a member of a number of corporate board of directors, including ARAMARK, Hess Corporation, Pepsi Bottling Group, and major financial firms CIT Group Incorporated and Franklin Templeton Investments.
Since 1993, Kean has also been on the board of UnitedHealth Group, a large health insurance firm. In 2006, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission began investigating the conduct of the company's management and directors. Additionally, the Internal Revenue Service and prosecutors in the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York subpoenaed documents from the company. The investigations came to light after a series of probing articles in The Wall Street Journal in May 2006, which reported on the apparent backdating of hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of stock options by UnitedHealth Group's management. The backdating allegedly occurred with the knowledge and approval of the directors, including Kean, who sat on the company's compensation committee during three crucial years, according to the Journal. Major shareholders have filed lawsuits accusing Kean and the other directors of failing in their fiduciary duty.
In 2004, Kean's compensation from UnitedHealth Group alone was more than $650,000; in that year, as a corporate director, he missed more than a quarter of the company's board-related meetings.
Read more about this topic: Thomas Kean
Famous quotes containing the words corporate and/or boards:
“If when a businessman speaks of minority employment, or air pollution, or poverty, he speaks in the language of a certified public accountant analyzing a corporate balance sheet, who is to know that he understands the human problems behind the statistical ones? If the businessman would stop talking like a computer printout or a page from the corporate annual report, other people would stop thinking he had a cash register for a heart. It is as simple as thatbut that isnt simple.”
—Louis B. Lundborg (19061981)
“Strange that so few ever come to the woods to see how the pine lives and grows and spires, lifting its evergreen arms to the light,to see its perfect success; but most are content to behold it in the shape of many broad boards brought to market, and deem that its true success! But the pine is no more lumber than man is, and to be made into boards and houses is no more its true and highest use than the truest use of a man is to be cut down and made into manure.”
—Henry David Thoreau (18171862)