Most UAE Boards Think They've Made the Shift. They Haven't. I'll be upfront. Every consultancy in Dubai is selling the same line right now. "Governance has moved from compliance to strategy." It's in every pitch deck, every conference panel, every LinkedIn post by a Big Four partner. And honestly, most of it is rubbish. Here's what I actually see when I sit in UAE boardrooms. Most companies are still doing compliance. They've just dressed it up in strategy language. They have

There was a time, not so long ago, when sitting on a corporate board was something you accepted as a quiet honour. A retirement crown. A few meetings a year, a sitting fee, a polite dinner, and a line on the LinkedIn page that read "Independent Director, ABC Limited." That world is gone. In 2026, board compensation is no longer a prestige conversation. It is a governance risk conversation. And the people running that conversation are not the directors themselves — they are th

Let me paint a quick scene. It is a Tuesday morning in March. The annual general meeting of a Nifty 50 company is two weeks away. The board has spent six months on a thoughtful, intentional decision to delay CEO succession by a year — because the company is mid-way through a major acquisition and continuity matters. They have explained the reasoning in earnings calls, investor letters, and the proxy statement. Somewhere in a server in New York, an AI system ingests that proxy

Here is a quiet number that has been making the rounds in CFO conversations for the last six months. Ninety-five percent. That is the share of corporate generative AI pilots that have not produced a measurable impact on profit and loss, according to a July 2025 report from MIT's NANDA initiative called The GenAI Divide. Between thirty and forty billion dollars has been spent on enterprise AI. Five percent of those pilots are extracting millions in real value. The other ninety

Here is a strange little scene that is playing out inside boardrooms across the world right now. A board chair turns to the CEO and asks, very politely, who owns the AI strategy. The CEO smiles, nods, and says the right thing. The board feels reassured. The CEO walks back to their office, calls a meeting, and asks the same question to their own team. Four different executives raise their hands. One of them is the CIO. One is HR. One is the head of a business unit. One is sitt

Let me start with a question most boards have not yet asked themselves out loud. If an AI agent in your company places an order, signs off a refund, files a customs entry, or sends a quote to a client at 3 AM on a Sunday — and gets it wrong — who exactly is accountable on Monday morning? If you paused for a second there, you are not alone. That pause is the whole problem with agentic AI governance right now. Boards across India, the US, and Europe are sitting on a quiet shift

A new cohort of senior executives is stepping decisively into board-level governance and strategic leadership roles across India, the Middle East, and beyond. Their appointments, spanning independent directorships, vice chairmanships, executive directorships, and advisory mandates, reflect a sustained shift in how India's boardrooms are being constituted. Through its Director's Institute Data Bank and Board Search, World Development Corporation’s Directors' Institute – World

Nair’s appointment reflects rising demand for trained and experienced independent directors The appointment of Ajit Nair as an Independent Director at Nityas Gems and Jewellery Limited points to a wider pattern taking shape in Indian boardrooms — one where senior professionals with deep operational credentials are increasingly stepping into formal governance positions. The appointment was recognised by World Development Corporation’s Directors’ Institute – World Council of Di

Directors’ Institute – World Council of Directors is a World Development Corporation initiative and a premier global platform for board-level training, governance certification, and director development.