It is not hard to see why there has been such interest recently in so apparently unlikely a subject as corporate governance. The scandals of the past few years, in Britain and elsewhere in the international world of business, culminated for many people in the Maxwell affair, where a powerful individual seemed to have ruled a business empire virtually unchallenged and, in the process, to have ruined the lives and hopes of thousands of pensioner stakeholders in his enterprise. In this case, the law appeared to have been systematically broken and, while it was recognised that no system of control can completely protect against those prepared to ride roughshod over legal and conventional arrangements, questions were inevitably asked about the role of those who had held positions of power in the Maxwell empire. What about the board? Where were the other executive directors? What were the non-executives doing?