Corporate Boards Call on the Expertise of Retired Executives

Corporate boards, especially at start-ups and small and medium-size businesses, are showing a growing appetite for activist directors who are former big company executives. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, aimed at cleaning up corporate accounting in the wake of the Enron scandal, has put tremendous pressure on the boards of companies to uphold the highest standards of good governance. And who better to help guide those companies than experienced hands from the higher echelons of the corporate world? Retirees-turned-directors include several millionaires who left their full-time perches at Microsoft, Cisco Systems and eBay.