The 2022 Ireland Spencer Stuart Board Index examines the 20 largest companies, according to market capitalisation on the Euronext Dublin (the ISEQ 20).
Our start date for the year under review is 1 May 2021 and our cut-off date is 30 April 2022, although in practice the last working day of the month was 29 April 2022.
The purpose of the survey is to provide a comprehensive review of governance practices in these 20 companies at a given point, in order to identify significant trends.
Information has been compiled from publicly available sources. This report analyses board membership as it stood on 30 April 2022; remuneration information is taken from the 2021 annual report for each organisation.
We generally treat chairs, non-executive directors, and executives separately throughout the course of this study. We have tried to make it as clear as possible which of these groups we are analysing for any given topic.
In discussing CEOs, CFOs, and other executive directors, we are concerned only with those who sit on the board of their company. There is a section dedicated to the executive committees of the companies, which is clearly indicated.
Executive committee information is gathered from each organisation’s website as well as other publicly available sources. The name of the executive committee and what it encompasses varies between companies; senior management team or senior leadership team are also common names; in all cases we use the term adopted by each company to describe their most senior employees.
Foreign directors are defined as being of a different nationality from the company on whose board they sit. First-time non-executive directors are defined as being in their first term or first three years as a non-executive director and not having held any other external non-executive role before joining the board.
All remuneration data is given in euros. We have analysed both the fees as they are stated in the annual report that would be earned by a non-executive who serves in the role for the full year, and the fees as they were actually paid out in the course of the year, including for NEDs who joined the board or changed role part way through the year. The data being analysed is clearly stated in each case.