A lot of mutual fund boards are facing multiple retirements in the next several years—mostly those that have been around for a while and have members who were pioneers in the fund governance space. These directors are reaching their early to mid-70s and are now subject to the mandatory retirement policies they helped put in place.

What happens to a board when half or more of its members step down over the span of a short period of time? How do the remaining members retain some of the institutional knowledge possessed by the retiring directors? Is the process of onboarding a series of new directors disruptive to the boardroom? What approaches are boards using to ensure as smooth a transition as possible?

These are some of the issues on which we aim to shed light as we speak with boards going through this generational shift. PNC Funds is one such board, with five of its eight independent directors in their 70s, and Invesco Funds has been dealing with it over the past couple of years, having brought on six new directors since the beginning of 2016. 

In addition to covering fund governance and fund board-related issues, we sometimes like to highlight information that may be of interest to our readers because there is some cross over or applicability to the boardrooms in which they work. Corporate governance is one such area, and our Added Perspective section is chock full of good resources on this topic. Most recently, we've posted a report issued by DLA Piper on corporate compliance and risk that includes how compliance personnel are interacting with corporate boards. The report does not cover the mutual fund industry, but some of the corporate governance information in it may be helpful to fund directors and fund compliance personnel. Take a look at it when you have a moment.

Seeing as summer has truly taken hold, we're wondering if you've got anything good on your reading list. Send me an email (hillary.jackson@fundboardviews.com) with the books you've read recently or are aiming to read in the months ahead—we'll try to include them on our summer reading list that will be published later this week. Thanks, as always, for your feedback. 

For now,

Hillary Jackson, founding editor