Governance team of the year (small to mid-cap) Hewlett Packard Enterprise
Derek Windham, HPE
It was difficult to look past Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) for this year’s governance team of the year (small to mid-cap) award.
After all, the company won awards for best AGM, best proxy statement (mid-cap) and governance professional of the year (small to mid-cap) for Derek Windham. HPE was also short-listed in the best entity management category. As one of the judges commented: ‘The firm is excellent in a number of areas.’
HPE came into existence with more than 1,000 legal entities, so the company needed to deploy effective corporate governance, technology and expertise to simplify and rationalize the complex corporate structure. During the past couple of years, HPE’s legal team has worked with colleagues in tax and finance and within the business to narrow down the number of legal entities in alignment with the company’s needs.
This process was led by an executive committee comprising country and management representatives who identified entities to be eliminated, found the most efficient way to do so and were held accountable for achieving targets. In 2020 the team met its target by eliminating 54 entities.
Successful entity management requires that the record of corporate information is completely up to date and accurate for everyday use. With this in mind, HPE’s international governance team during the firm's 2020 ‘legal hackathon’ created an innovative macro that simplifies the process for updating the licensed database used to keep track of HPE entities’ information, including their name, shareholder interests and names of directors, officers and authorized representatives.
In doing so, the customized tool encourages HPE attorneys and paralegals to update corporate information in real time rather than putting off a chore.
AGM and more The judges said HPE was adept at using technology to make its AGM very accessible. The company’s shareholder meeting is targeted at shareholder engagement and allows for interaction with executives and the board.
HPE in 2021 received more than 200 questions before and during the AGM and pledged to answer all of them. The live Q&A segment of the 2021 AGM ran for 25 minutes with questions answered by the board chair, chief executive, CFO and chair of the board’s compensation committee.
Answers to questions not tackled during the meeting are posted afterwards on HPE’s annual meeting and proxy website.
Technology is part of the HPE governance team’s DNA and, unlike the vast majority of companies, the HPE team uses a video feed for AGMs as part of its efforts to replicate the experience of an in-person meeting. Shareholders can participate via mobile phone, tablet or desktop. The company has also crafted what its awards submission describes as ‘a consistent medium’ through which its shareholders can easily access important information in its proxy statement and on the AGM web page.
For the 2021 proxy statement, HPE went back to the drawing board for a complete creative redesign using modern styling that the company’s award submission states ‘emphasized the substance of the disclosure over graphical distractions’. The proxy statement also expanded on previous ESG disclosures from a single page in the ‘governance’ section to its own separate ‘Living Progress’ section – named after the company’s CSR program – at the front of the document.
The proxy statement further featured disclosures on the civil unrest that affected the US and other countries in 2020. Windham explains that HPE had been listening to what was on the minds of internal leaders and wanted to convey that the company understood the importance of the issues and was thinking about them.
The team also spent a lot of time developing its searchable and interactive online proxy platform.
