Diligent Boards & Governance

📊 56% of corporate secretaries and general counsel see themselves as strategic advisors to the board. Only 17% think their board sees them the same way. Despite that 39-point gap, the function is already evolving. Our new Global State of Legal Entity Compliance benchmark shows expanded collaboration across all seven core business functions over the past two years, with 59% of practitioners working more closely with Risk and Compliance, 53% with the board itself, and 51% with Finance. Company Secretaries and GCs are stepping into a more central, strategic role across the enterprise. Yet 55% still rely on spreadsheets and one-off documents to manage critical entity compliance work, which is part of why more than half of teams experienced a near-miss compliance event last year. Throwing more hours at it won't fix this. What changes things is letting AI carry the load, so teams can take on more without losing their grip on it. The benchmark, built with 300+ senior practitioners in partnership with the global chartered governance institutes, gives the function the data it has been missing. 📥 Download the report: https://bit.ly/4ux0GPq

"AI is not a separate conversation for board members. It needs to permeate every conversation... talent strategy, growth strategy, cost and efficiency, product strategy." Steve Hasker on why AI belongs in every board discussion. #TrustedtoLead: https://bit.ly/3PpO4ul

A year ago, general counsel were asking what liability they face if they use AI in the boardroom. Now the question is what liability they face if they don't. Neil Barlow caught the inversion at #Elevate2026. It changes what reasonable care looks like for a board — and what fiduciary duty asks of the GCs advising them.

AI risk disclosure in the S&P 500 jumped from 12% to 83% in two years. AI expertise on boards? Still under 3%. On the latest Corporate Director Podcast, Roosevelt Giles (Just Capital, GHI Healthcare) joins Dottie Schindlinger and Meghan Day to explain why every CEO is now a technology CEO, and why parking AI and cyber inside the audit committee is the wrong default. His oversight test for any board comes down to two questions. "Why?" and "How do you know?" Listen here: https://bit.ly/4uv0CzW

Board prep usually breaks down before the meeting ever starts — rebuilding agendas, waiting on insights, or double‑checking what’s ready to publish. This month’s Diligent Boards updates remove those slowdowns. Agenda templates give admins a consistent starting point every cycle, while GovernAI insights now generate automatically when a book is published — without adding steps or losing admin control. Explore what’s new → https://bit.ly/4ftfoCi

64% of US corporate directors now say AI is a top business priority. In Australia, only 13% of boards actually have AI expertise around the table. That gap is the entire reason boards are stuck on this — the ambition is there, but the capability to oversee it isn't. Our post-Elevate playbook digs into what's working: AI summaries that compress 200-page packs into decisions, smart minutes that capture nuance, and a SWOT template for the conversation worth having with directors before the next AI item lands on the agenda. → https://bit.ly/42GgWS0

Directors share their most sensitive disclosures with you. Your tools have to be worthy of that trust. Board materials and D&O data require more than basic access controls. Secure data rooms, granular permissions, NDA enforcement, and dynamic watermarking protect confidential board work end to end. Not as an afterthought. By design. Security you can prove. Trust you can show. Learn more 👇 https://bit.ly/4ntzKxk

🪑 37 board seats. That's how many shareholder activists won at Japanese companies last year. The previous year, it was 7. A more than fivefold jump in twelve months. Activists in Japan are playing a long game, running multi-year campaigns that pair governance reforms with demands around capital allocation and returns to shareholders. If you serve on a board with operations or listings in Asia, this is the year to understand the new playbook. 🌏 A new Corporate Governance in Asia 2026 report from Diligent Market Intelligence, produced in partnership with Georgeson, outlines what's working, what's failing, and where the pressure goes next ↓ https://bit.ly/491FIj4

3 live demos left in our "Beyond the Board Book" series for GCs and senior risk leaders. 🔺 May 14 | Third-Party Risk Intel Your Board Can Actually Use 🔺 May 21 | From Silos to a Single Story 🔺 May 28 | From Audit Findings to Early-Warning Signals for Legal All sessions are at 11 a.m. ET. You can watch it live or on demand.