One of Gavin Morris’s first jobs as the new managing director of U.K. shareholder engagement firm Governance for Owners Group will be to look at how prepared European companies are in the face of a global financial meltdown. Morris, 55, assumed the position on March 2 and will be working with European listed companies to push for change. The former CFO of DS Smith, a U.K. packaging and office-supply company, Morris says GO’s current priorities are corporate governance issues and crisis preparedness — specifically, whether a firm has peripheral assets that could be sold off, allowing it to focus on any challenges to its core operations. “It is all hands to the pump at the moment, and we need to make sure that those hands are deployed in the right areas,” he says.
