In this issue:

- Strategic Planning Challenges

- Cybersecurity

- Assess the Impact of Advances in Technology and Big Data

- Shareholder Activism

- The Return of M&A

- Risk Management

- Ensure Appropriate Board Composition

- Explore New Trends in Reducing Corporate Health Care Costs

- Executive Compensation

- Maintain Robust Compliance Programs

- Endnotes

- Excerpt from Strategic Planning Challenges -

Strategic planning again tops the list of topics to which directors want to devote more time.1 Overseeing the company’s direction is one of the core responsibilities of directors. It often requires directors to step back and look at the company’s business from the “20,000 foot level” by considering the major factors that will likely impact their company’s business and ensuring that management has formulated a strategic direction for the company that takes these factors into account. Depending on a company’s international exposure and line of business, management and directors face particular challenges from uneven economic growth and rising geopolitical tensions as they craft their company’s plans for 2015 and beyond.