You are at your neighbour’s birthday party. There you hear that a member of the supervisory board has a new job in addition to his board position. In his new position, he will be working at a company in the same industry, but not necessarily a direct competitor. He has not reported
this new job to the board as yet. When you relayed this story to your director, he became furious. He feels the fact that the board member will now be privy to insider information in two potentially competitive companies is unacceptable. You start to wonder whether you should have told your director what you had hear. This stresses you out and you’re even suffering from sleeplessness.
Advice
As an assistant you are in a difficult situation because you happened to come across this nomination by coincidence. However, you are not to blame. The supervisory board should be in the possession of regulations or articles of association. If it appears that there are no satisfactory agreements about conflicts of interest and non-competition clauses, you could advise your director to adjust the articles of association. In advance you could read all the conditions together and screen them to check if they are up-to-date/ sustainable.
