For a time, a number of former senior bank executives and semi-retired accountancy firm partners were being regularly contacted to sit on boards of newly registered companies with foreign shareholders.
Board directors expect to receive what they consider a standard board agenda. It includes management accounts, (perhaps) a sales and operations report, (hopefully) budgets, a request for approval of a capital expenditure project, besides the even more standard corporate governance items of approval of half yearly or end of year financial statements, auditors’ reports etc.
What inspired you to start your own consultancy company?
My father is my inspiration. We both had the desire to start a boutique advisory firm which focuses on forging supportive, fiduciary and long-term relationships with a small clientele base.
I was surprised to read the David Tang’s reply to a question on the British Airways’ debacle of complete shutdown of its computers a couple of weeks ago (FT 10th June 2017). David Tang is my favourite FT Weekend columnists and it is the first column that I go to every Saturday for these last ten years.
“We were seeking a relationship-based advisory service focusing on a small clientele,” Ms Zahra, the company’s managing director told The Business Observer. “We are thinking more on long-term relationships; less transaction-based and thus, more relationship-based. We believe in partnering with businesses and always aim at being open, transparent and genuine in the way we work with them.”
The boards of directors of listed and regulated companies have been hardened further during these last ten years as regulators’ tentacles have reached the board rooms and company secretary offices of thriving business and financial institutions.
The confusion on the purpose of boards of directors and who qualifies as a board director lives on despite greater awareness on corporate governance by means of conferences and seminars and more restrictive criteria exercised by the MFSA on regulated or listed companies.
Employee engagement is all about the emotional connection an employee feels towards their job and their workplace. You can easily differentiate an emotionally charged culture from an unemotionally charged one.
The human being is made up of an array of emotions, most of them complex and difficult to understand. Empathy is all about being able to understand the needs of others, understanding what they’re feeling and thinking.
I have increasingly been meeting employers and managers who comment about the difficulties they are facing to recruit new people. The trouble seems to arise particularly when employers have to deal with the ‘millennials’ and the ‘Generation Z’.
