Speaking to an audience of 200 at SMU on Tuesday 26 February, Joel Stern, Chairman & CEO Stern Stewart, delivered a memorable lecture that combined corporate governance and accountability to shareholders. Mr Stern highlighted how the proponents of corporate performance measurement prefer economic measures of performance, whether they are called EVA, CFROI, CVA or SVA over accounting measures. He brought this complex subject to life and challenged the educated audience.

For more than 30 years Mr Stern has been on the faculty of the Columbia Business School and is an adjunct professor at five other leading graduate schools of business. His close ties to the academic community were accentuated by Associate Professor Annie Koh during her introduction. Rather than accept a speaking fee, he requested that the monies be contributed to a scholarship fund.

Mr Stern has been a Managing Partner of Stern Stewart since founding the firm in 1982 and is a recognised authority on financial economics, corporate performance measurement, corporate valuation and incentive compensation. As a pioneer and leading advocate of the concept of shareholder value, his lecture was insightful and filled with an entertaining presentation of analysis and anecdotes.

Following his energy-filled lecture – as Mr Stern left the podium near the end of this lecture he described himself as the Oprah of business schools because of his unusual practice of joining his audience during lectures – he was joined in a panel discussion by Euleen Goh, non-executive Chairman of International Enterprise (IE) Singapore, Sam Ong, GFO at Hyflux, Tan Hee Teck, CEO of Resorts World at Sentosa  Pte  Ltd,  and  Jeanette  Wong,  CFO  of  DBS  Group.  The  panel  was  chaired  by  Associate  Professor
Annie Koh.