Well spotted. Expressing the amount of ownership that rises to a conflict
of interest in terms of a percentage of all shares in the company strikes
me as startlingly inappropriate.

Owning 1% of a company worth $400 billion would be a very, very significant
conflict of interest for a board member. Owning 11% of a tiny company worth
$5,000, not so much. Surely, what matters is not the percentage of
ownership, but its monetary value.

As you say, for simplicity and transparency it is clearly best if board
members recuse from any decisions involving a company they hold shares in.

That change to the Conflict of Interest policy should be made as soon as
possible.

Andreas

On Sun, Jan 10, 2016 at 12:11 PM, WereSpielChequers <
werespielchequ...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Recent threads query whether it is or should be a conflict of interest for
> a board member to support the appointment of someone who used to work at
> the same company, and whether multiple board members have shares or stock
> options with a particular company. So I have read the Conflict of interest
> policy <https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Conflict_of_interest_policy>,
> which from my lay person's reading does not appear to have been breached.
>
> I have taken the opportunity to propose a couple of changes
> <
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_transparency_gap#Conflicts_of_interest_-_investments
> >
> to that policy. Note I have not first tried to find out how long it is
> since a certain new trustee left the same company that an existing trustee
> works for, nor  have I asked any board member how many Google shares that
> they own. But I am making the assumption that no individual member of the
> WMF board currently owns 10% or more of Google, so I would be very
> surprised if any of them have managed to break the current conflict of
> interest policy as I understand it.
>
> To be clear I am not proposing any sort of retrospective change that would
> mean a past decision was void because a trustee voted despite having an
> interest according to these new rules. Any change to the rules could only
> apply to decisions made after the rules were updated.
>
> WereSpielChequers
> _______________________________________________
> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
> New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>
_______________________________________________
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, 
<mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>

Reply via email to