PepsiCo's stock decline has sparked questions about strategy, leadership, and accountability. But the most important issue may be one that extends far beyond Pepsi: at what point should a board conclude that independent oversight has become more valuable than unified leadership? The hardest governance decision is often not combining the CEO and chair roles, but knowing when to separate them.

The conventional story of capitalism is that founders build, go public, and gradually let go. The story of Roger Penske is different. His company began as a founder-controlled private business, became a founder-controlled public business, and is now returning to private ownership while remaining under founder control. In many ways, the transaction marks not an exit, but a return to where the story started.

As AI moves from answering questions to doing work, boards need to understand a new governance challenge: not how many tokens the company consumes, but what authority AI agents have, what resources they consume, and what value they create. For many companies, the economics of artificial intelligence initially looked familiar. Buy software, purchase licenses, give employees access, put the expense into the technology budget, and measure adoption. AI agents are beginning to ch

In October 2026, Keurig Dr Pepper named Russ Torres, President and COO of Kimberly-Clark, as CEO of its future standalone coffee company. What made the announcement noteworthy was not Torres’ credentials, but the fact that he became the third executive selected for the role since 2025, since KDP announced its acquisition of JDE Peet’s and its plans to separate its coffee and beverage businesses into independent companies. [fooddive.com], [finance.yahoo.com] At first glance, t

Boards increasingly recognize that they have expertise gaps. Yet simply adding AI, cybersecurity, or other specialists may not solve the problem. The more important question is whether boards have enough enterprise leaders with the domain depth to challenge management on the issues that increasingly shape corporate strategy.

More than half of Gartner’s projected $2.67 trillion in worldwide AI spending for 2026 is infrastructure. Understanding where that money is going helps explain the less-visible economics of AI and when the infrastructure buildout should matter to boards.

The SEC wants to understand the relationship between what ISS recommends and how institutional investors actually vote. ISS says the government's demand for identifiable voting records goes too far. Behind the subpoena fight is a larger corporate-governance question: Who should know how shareholders vote, and how much oversight is necessary to ensure that proxy advisers and investment managers are fulfilling their responsibilities?

What if the best corporate governance involves less governing? Warren Buffett's approach at challenges the assumption that more oversight, more committees, and more intervention necessarily produce better companies. His alternative was built around ownership, trust, capital allocation, candor, and directors willing to say “no” when it truly mattered.

The people building the world's most advanced AI systems are becoming more vocal about its risks. As researchers from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google DeepMind publicly debate safety, alignment, and control, a new question is emerging: can governance keep pace with capability?

What if the future of restaurants isn't a single great brand, but a portfolio of great brands operating on a common platform? That's the question at the heart of Inspire Brands. Since 2018, the company has acquired Dunkin', Sonic Drive-In, Jimmy John's, and other iconic chains while building one of the world's largest franchise restaurant systems. As Inspire moves toward a potential IPO, the company is about to discover whether public investors believe in the same vision.