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  3. Ruth Simmons joined Goldman Sachs’s board as an outside director in January

Ruth Simmons joined Goldman Sachs’s board as an outside director in January

游客2024-05-22  32
问题     Ruth Simmons joined Goldman Sachs’s board as an outside director in January 2000; a year later she became president of Brown University in Rhode Island. For the rest of the decade she apparently juggled (同时做) both roles (as well as several other directorships) without attracting much criticism. But by the end of 2009 Ms Simmons was under fire from students and alumni for having sat on Goldman’s compensation committee; how could she have let those enormous bonus payouts pass unremarked? By February Ms Simmons had left the board. The position was just taking up too much time, she said.
    Outside directors are supposed to serve as helpful, yet less biased, advisers on a firm’s board. Having made their wealth and their reputations elsewhere, they presumably have enough independence to disagree with the chief executive’s proposals. Leaders from other fields are frequently in demand: former presidents or Cabinet members, retired CEOs, and yes, university presidents. If the sky, and the share price, is falling, outside directors should be able to give advice based on having weathered their own crises.
    The researchers from the Ohio State University used a database that covered more than 10,000 firms and more than 64,000 different directors between 1989 and 2004. Then they simply checked which directors stayed from one proxy statement to the next. The most likely reason for departing a board was age, so the researchers concentrated on those "surprise" disappearances by directors under the age of 70. They found that after a surprise departure, the probability that the company will subsequently have to restate earnings increases by nearly 20%. The likelihood of being named in a federal class-action lawsuit also increases, and the stock is likely to perform worse. The effect tended to be larger for larger firms.
    The obvious conclusion might be that outside directors, with inside knowledge of tricky times ahead, prefer to save their own reputations, rather than those of the company they are serving. But although a correlation between them leaving and subsequent bad performance at the firm is suggestive, it does not mean that such directors are always jumping off a sinking ship. Often they "trade up", leaving riskier, smaller firms for larger and more stable firms.
    But the researchers believe that outside directors have an easier time of avoiding a blow to their reputations if they leave a firm before bad news breaks, even if a review of history shows they were on the board at the time any wrongdoing occurred. Firms who want to keep their outside directors through tough times may have to create incentives, such as increasing pay, says Dr Fahlenbrach. Otherwise outside directors will follow the example of Ms Simmons, once again very popular on campus. [br] Why was Ms Simmons criticized according to the passage?
选项 A、She gained illegal pay from a third company.
B、She failed to fulfill her duty in Brown University.
C、She refused to make compromises with the students.
D、She left Goldman Sachs’s board in tough times.
答案 B
解析 根据题干中的Ms Simmons将本题出处定位到首段第3句。该句提  到，她受到学生的批评是因为在高盛薪酬委员会任职，分号后进一步解释她受批  评的原因：她怎能让(学校)那么大笔奖金在毫无注意的情况下通过了呢?接下  来提到：二月份Ms Simmons离开了高盛董事会。她说那个职位占用了她大量时  间。综上可以看出，她在别处的任职造成了她在学校的失职，因此受到了批评，  故答案为[B]。[A]“她从第三方公司得到非法收入”中的“非法收入”在文中未提  到。[C]“她拒绝与学生妥协”在文中未提到，故排除。[D]“她在艰难时期离开高盛  董事会”因果倒置，她是因为受到批评才离开董事会的，而不是因离开董事会而  受到批评。
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