沃尔玛董事会正在成为公众关注的焦点，而且在相当一段时间内都将如此。

    2005年前后，沃尔玛管理层终止了对其墨西哥公司存在的贿赂行为的内部调查。目前，该公司正因此遭受调查，除了可能的法律后果之外，沃尔玛还面临声誉扫地和潜在的管理人事变动的危机。由于公司高管也被怀疑牵涉其中，沃尔玛董事会需要查出当时到底发生了什么，以及当时都有哪些人知情并且采取了什么措施。

    斯坦福大学商学院企业监管研究项目主任戴维•拉克表示，“这种形势对董事会来说真的很糟糕。董事会具有进行风险管理的职责，并且要关注所有这种问题。但问题是，作为董事会成员，你无法亲自开展内部审计。你不得不依赖管理者们为你提供信息。”

    《纽约时报》上周末报道了沃尔玛的贿赂案及当时该公司的调查情况，并称现任首席执行官迈克尔•杜克及其前任李•斯考特都是知情者，斯考特当时就已担任首席执行官，而杜克当时则主管国际业务。沃尔玛昨天发表声明表示，公司的审计委员会在半年前曾针对这些问题进行了内部调查。

    除了斯考特和杜克两人都是沃尔玛董事会成员这一事实以外，该报道并未提及其他公司董事是否知晓此事。这使得审计委员会（由独立董事组成）在当前调查中所起的主导作用变得很关键。沃尔玛公司的一位发言人拒绝发表评论。

    在这份声明中，沃尔玛表示公司新设了一个全球反腐败合规官职位，以加强全球所有市场的《反海外腐败法案》（FCPA）合规工作。担任这一职位的官员负责监督沃尔玛驻海外市场的五位FCPA合规主管。

    彭尼公司（J.C. Penney）前任首席执行官艾伦•科斯特鲁姆曾经在2007年至2010年之间担任沃尔玛董事会成员。他表示记不起担任董事期间曾讨论过FCPA合规风险问题。他说，“公司董事会议程上有很多紧急事项。有太多的事情需要讨论，所以我们不会去讨论那些以前从未发生过的事情。”他补充说，“现在此事已提上日程，沃尔玛会竭尽全力修正此问题。”

    沃尔玛董事会包括不少顶级商界精英，比如可口可乐公司（Coca-Cola）前任首席执行官道格拉斯•达福特、百事可乐公司（PepsiCo）前任首席执行官史蒂芬•瑞尼蒙德以及风险投资机构Accel Partners的经理合伙人吉姆•布雷耶。谷歌公司（Google）负责本土和地图业务的副总裁玛丽莎•麦尔将作为董事会候选成员于6月1日参加最近一次的董事会成员增补选举。

    董事会的若干其他成员来自高盛公司（Goldman Sachs）、新闻集团（News Corporation）、和绿衫咖啡烘焙公司（Green Mountain Coffee Roasters）。因为这几家公司最近也被审查，理论上来说，他们应该能让沃尔玛更好地认识到如何才能顺利度过这一危机。

    Wal-Mart's board is about to step into the spotlight -- and don't expect the glare to subside any time soon.

    Along with possible legal consequences, the retailer faces reputational risks and potential managerial disruption over allegations that executives shut down an internal bribery investigation into its Mexico operations in the middle of last decade. Facing claims that senior leaders were involved, Wal-Mart's (WMT) board will need to determine what happened, and who knew what and when.

    "This is one of these nightmare situations for the board," said David Larcker, director of the corporate governance research program at Stanford's business school. "You have a responsibility to do risk management and pay attention to all these kinds of issues, but the problem is that, as a board member, you're not out there doing the internal auditing. You have to rely on information provided by managers."

    Wal-Mart said in a statement yesterday that its audit committee launched an internal inquiry six months ago into the bribery and investigation issues reported by the New York Times over the weekend -- issues that the Times alleges current CEO Mike Duke and former CEO Lee Scott were aware of. Scott was CEO at the time, and Duke was head of international.

    Beyond the fact that Scott and Duke both sit on Wal-Mart's board, the story did not report that any of the company's directors were aware of the situation. This makes it critical that the company's audit committee, comprised of independent directors, take the lead on the current inquiry. A spokesperson for Wal-Mart declined to offer comment for this story.

    In its statement, Wal-Mart said it had strengthened its global Foreign Corrupt Practices Act bribery law compliance processes, creating a new global FCPA compliance officer role that will oversee five compliance directors based in global markets.

    Allen Questrom, former CEO of J.C. Penney (JCP) who served on the Wal-Mart board from 2007 to 2010, said he doesn't recall discussing FCPA risk during his time as a director. "People have on the agenda things that are immediate," he said. "There are so many things you have to discuss that you don't discuss things that have never happened to you before." He added, "Now that it's on the table, they'll bend over to correct it."

    Wal-Mart's board includes a collection of A-listers, such as former Coca-Cola (KO) CEO Douglas Daft, former CEO of PepsiCo (PEP) Steven Reinemund, and Accel Partners manager partner Jim Breyer. Marissa Mayer, Google's (GOOG) vice president of local and maps, will stand for election as the latest addition to the board on June 1.

    The board members' other directorships include a handful of companies that have recently come under scrutiny -- Goldman Sachs (GS), News Corporation (NWS), Green Mountain Coffee Roasters (GMCR) -- which, ideally, should give the group a decent sense of how they should navigate the turbulence that's ahead.

    沃尔玛的15位董事会成员中有10位是独立董事。与该公司直接相关的有五位，包括杜克、斯考特以及沃尔顿家族的三名成员，罗伯•沃尔顿以及他的弟弟吉姆•沃尔顿和女婿格里高利•潘纳尔。潘纳尔曾经在沃尔玛日本分公司工作过。沃尔玛的首席执行官和董事长职位是分离的，董事长职务由罗伯•沃尔顿担任。

    公司治理评级机构GMI公司的高级助理研究员保罗•霍奇森表示，家族成员担任董事能够强化公司的业绩，因为他们对于企业成功的追求通常与公司股东是相一致的。他补充说道，除了沃尔顿家族的三人，从沃尔玛司的企业规模来看，其外部董事所占比例还是很高的。

    研究企业治理的田纳西大学教授拉瑞•福沃尔表示，“么是独立董事会，什么是真正的外部董事，要对此进行定义是非常困难的。” 他表示，在沃尔玛至少一半董事都与沃尔玛以外的公司有关。

    沃尔玛年收益4,470亿美元，在2011年财富五百强排名第一位。对于沃尔玛这样的超大型企业来说，很难找到一位来自一家并未与沃尔玛有任何方面业务合作的公司的董事会成员人选。但这些董事的社会关系还是有必要加以说明的。沃尔玛在委托书里也对此进行了解释。

    沃尔玛指出，Accel Partners公司的吉姆•布雷耶直接或间接拥有社交媒体平台公司Kosmix不到3%的股份，而后者是沃尔玛于2011年收购的企业。Accel公司某基金拥有Kosmix公司超过15%的股份，在此次收购中获得3,570万美元。该委托书还表示，布雷耶是独立董事中的首席董事，他并未参与沃尔玛挑选Kosmix公司作为收购目标的过程，而且也回避了相关的讨论。

    GMI公司的霍奇森在电子邮件中写道，“他是一位风险投资家，因此，他更有可能对沃尔玛有意收购意的公司进行直接或间接投资。这并不是说布雷耶的独立性不会受到潜在影响，恰恰相反，这正好可以解释为什么这种情况可能会发生。”

    沃尔玛还与那些其董事会成员参与管理的公司进行业务合作。董事米歇尔•伯恩斯在2011年10月之前担任美世咨询公司（Mercer）首席执行官。该公司收到364万美元作为2012财年的咨询服务费。此外，沃尔玛董事阿恩•索伦森是万豪国际集团（Marriott International）首席执行官，沃尔玛公司曾支付给该集团1,900万美元作为“酒店、住宿和相关服务”费。万豪集团曾经花100万美元从沃尔玛采购。

    霍奇森表示，“如果你具有完全的独立性，你应该更容易提出质疑。但如果1,900万美元的业务取决于你在沃尔玛的立场，就没那么容易了。”

    译者：李玫晓/汪皓

    Wal-Mart lists 10 of its 15 directors as independent. The five with direct connections to the company are Duke, Scott, and three members of the Walton family -- Rob Walton, his brother Jim Walton, and Rob Walton's son-in-law Gregory Penner, who previously worked for Wal-Mart in Japan. While Wal-Mart does split its CEO and chairman roles, Rob Walton, not an independent director, holds the chairman position.

    Paul Hodgson, senior research associate at corporate governance ratings agency GMI, says that family members as directors can reinforce a company's performance because their concerns for success are often aligned with those of shareholders. But beyond the Waltons, he added, there's a high proportion of what he called outside-related directors for a company of Wal-Mart's size.

    "When you truly start looking at what is an independent board, what truly is an outside director, the way you define it is really difficult," says Larry Fauver, a professor at the University of Tennessee who focuses on governance. He noted that at Wal-Mart at least half the directors have a connection to the company beyond the board.

    Wal-Mart's scale, $447 billion in revenue and No. 1 on the 2011 Fortune 500 list, does make it hard to find a board member candidate who is affiliated with a company that doesn't do business with the retail giant in some capacity. But the directors' relationships are worth pointing out -- which Wal-Mart does in its proxy.

    The company noted that Accel's Jim Breyer owned directly and indirectly less than 3% of Kosmix, which Wal-Mart acquired in 2011; certain Accel Funds owned more than 15% of Kosmix and received about $35.7 million in the transaction. The proxy stated that Breyer, who serves as presiding director when the independent board members meet, was not involved in Wal-Mart's identification of Kosmix as an acquisition target and recused himself from all discussions.

    "He is a venture capitalist so it becomes more likely that he has some kind of direct or indirect investment in a wide range of companies that might be acquired by Wal-Mart," Hodgson of GMI said in an email. "That's not to say it doesn't potentially compromise his independence, but it does explain how it might happen."

    Wal-Mart also does business with companies where its board members are officers. Until October 2011, director Michele Burns was CEO of Mercer, which received $3.64 million for consulting services in fiscal 2012. Additionally, Wal-Mart director Arne Sorenson is CEO of Marriott International, which received $19 million from Wal-Mart for "hotel, lodging, and related services." Marriott paid Wal-Mart $1 million for purchases.

    "If you are fully independent," says Hodgson, "it's much easier for you to raise questions than if $19 million of business is riding on your staying in Wal-Mart's good books."