*NEWS*OFFICE DEPOT CHIEF SPEAKS UP….

[Anonymous]

Corporate America working to fix image, Office Depot chief says
JAN 2006
BOCA
RATON – Corporate America is still paying for a few high-profile
corporate scandals over the past five years even though they have
largely moved through the courts, Office Depot Chairman and Chief
Executive Steve Odland said………..”Once you’ve violated the public
trust, it takes awhile to get it back,” Odland said. “We have a public
relations job to do. We do have to mend some fences.”
Odland, who
has been in charge of Delray Beach-based Office Depot for eight months,
spoke to a roomful of executives at a meeting of the Florida chapter of
National Association of Corporate Directors at the Boca Raton Resort
and Club. The group meets several times a year to discuss corporate
governance and ethics issues.
Odland thinks that while the boardroom
scandals at Tyco International, Adelphia, WorldCom and Enron have
soiled the image of the nation’s public companies, most firms have made
the necessary changes to become good corporate citizens.
Citing
statistics from the Business Roundtable, a group of 160 chief
executives of the largest U.S. firms, Odland said eight of 10 of its
members have boards with independent directors holding three-quarters
of the seats. Nine of 10 members have established procedures for
communicating with shareholders. Half of its members have independent
chairmen or lead directors, and all of them hold closed meetings
without the chief executive present.
Odland acknowledged that many
of these changes were prompted by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, a law aimed
at greater public disclosure and stricter accounting controls. But he
was concerned about the law’s “unintended consequences,” including
shareholder lawsuits when stock prices fall sharply, and the high cost
of applying the law.
“We have to be careful not to criminalize
honest mistakes,” he said. “While nobody likes to see investors lose
money, without that possibility, nobody could make money.”
Joe
O’Donnell, chief executive of Boca Raton-based Artesyn Technologies,
agreed that the law was necessary to ensure more transparency in
corporate accounting but said it has become a costly measure to fulfill
each year.
“The intent of Sarbanes-Oxley was completely appropriate, but the details have been overdone,” O’Donnell said.
Odland
is no lightweight in the ethics arena. He has been at the forefront of
corporate governance since his days at AutoZone, where he replaced a
board dominated by insiders with nine independent directors and himself.
Office
Depot, the office supply giant, requires ethics training, including a
test that quizzes employees on how to act in workplace situations.
It staffs an ethics hot line with an independent contractor.
In
August, the company amended its corporate governance policy to include
a provision requiring board members to resign when they receive a
“withhold” or “against” vote from a majority of shareholders.
“I go out and tell employees to do the right thing,” Odland said. “If something bothers you, don’t do it.”

[Author]

January 2, 2006 at 10:19 AM