Corporate Governance

On August 24, 2026, Taiwan prosecutors indicted 9 people, including two Nvidia Taiwan employees, over an alleged scheme to illegally export 130 AI servers equipped with export-controlled Nvidia B300 GPUs to China in violation of US export controls. A Nvidia distribution manager surnamed Chang was named the 'key figure' who authorized release of the B300 GPUs; a second Nvidia employee was charged with breach of trust. Prosecutors say defendants used fake websites, falsified end-user certifications, and forged business records to route 74 servers to China (50 via Indonesia, 16 directly, 8 via Japan/Hong Kong); 56 servers were intercepted by Taiwan customs. Nvidia said it would work with Taiwanese authorities to resolve the allegations. US Senators Elizabeth Warren and Jim Banks cited the case in a letter arguing Nvidia's inability to detect this Southeast Asia diversion scheme undermines its claims that it can police direct China shipments.

In mid-August 2026, Revolut circulated a proposal to shareholders to increase co-founder and CEO Nik Storonsky's personal borrowing limit against his roughly 29% stake (worth an estimated $33 billion at the company's $115 billion valuation) from $50 million to $250 million. The proposal, internally codenamed 'Project Shasta,' would also remove the existing requirement for board approval of larger share pledges, eliminate proportional limits on how much stock can be pledged as collateral, and expand the share classes eligible to be pledged. Storonsky is the only person at Revolut to whom the pledge provisions apply. Revolut said it 'routinely updates its articles' to reflect the company's growth; governance commentators noted the removal of board approval and proportional limits was the more significant change, particularly given Storonsky simultaneously serves as CEO.

Ola Electric reversed a Rs 57 crore (~$6.8M) provision it had booked for potential penalties under India's battery-cell Production-Linked Incentive scheme in its June-quarter (Q1 FY27) results, before receiving formal approval from the Ministry of Heavy Industries for the extension and waiver it had requested. Statutory auditor BSR & Co. LLP (a KPMG India affiliate) issued a qualified audit opinion - the company's first since its 2024 listing - stating it could not obtain sufficient appropriate audit evidence in the absence of MHI approval. Ola Electric shares fell 5-6% on the news despite a narrower quarterly loss.

Following Vodacom's June 30, 2026 completion of a deal buying a controlling 55% stake in Safaricom (KES 204bn/EUR1.36bn for 15% from the Kenyan government plus KES 68bn/EUR450m for 5% from Vodafone), Safaricom sought and won shareholder approval on July 31, 2026 to remove long-standing governance protections tied to Kenyan-government ownership. The changes give Vodafone/Vodacom the right to nominate the CEO and all executive and shareholder-appointed directors (previously requiring board/government input), remove the requirement for government approval before regional expansion including into Ethiopia, eliminate the requirement that the executive committee be 'predominantly Kenyan', replace prior 10%/40% ownership-threshold protections with a single 50% threshold, and drop the mandatory dividend policy. Vodacom subsequently appointed two South African executives to Safaricom's board, increasing its board representation to 5 seats while Kenyan-government ownership fell from 35% to 20%.

A stockholder derivative lawsuit filed July 31, 2026 in the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois (Berliner v. Huang et al.) accused Nvidia's CEO Jensen Huang, CFO Colette Kress, and the board of breaching fiduciary duty by knowingly training NeMo Megatron and other language models on pirated 'shadow library' datasets (Anna's Archive, LibGen, Sci-Hub, Z-Library, Books3/SlimPajama), including material Nvidia allegedly sourced directly from Anna's Archive in 2023 despite an internal warning about copyright issues. The complaint also alleges Nvidia's Magpie TTS, FUGATTO, PersonaPlex and other voice-synthesis models extracted biometric voiceprints from hundreds of thousands of hours of speech recordings without notice or consent, in violation of the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act, and that proxy filings misrepresented data-sourcing compliance.

The US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency denied Wise National Trust's application to establish a national trust bank in Austin, Texas, citing 'significant supervisory and compliance concerns.' The OCC found the proposed organizers demonstrated a 'persistent inability to sufficiently manage' money-laundering and illicit-finance risk, lacked sufficient familiarity with federal banking law, and had no historical experience with fiduciary activities. The denial followed a July 2025 multistate consent order in which Wise US paid $4.2 million over deficiencies in suspicious-activity investigation and reporting, transaction-monitoring data integrity, and untimely correction of prior AML/BSA deficiencies. Wise said it has since strengthened its US compliance program and plans to reapply.

The Delhi High Court, acting on an RBI petition, ordered the winding up of Paytm Payments Bank Ltd (PPBL) through orders dated July 8 and July 22, 2026, appointing Girikumar M. Nair, a former SBI Chief General Manager, as liquidator with full board powers under the Banking Regulation Act. RBI said PPBL had sufficient liquidity to repay all deposit liabilities. The order formally closes out the bank whose license RBI had already cancelled, citing a persistent pattern of non-compliance detrimental to depositors' and the public interest.

Australian Federal Police's human exploitation taskforce opened an investigation into WiseTech Global co-founder Richard White, reported June 19, 2026, following a complaint from a former executive at a company he controls. The allegations, which White has emphatically denied, include coercing a financially and immigration-vulnerable woman into a relationship and providing false information on a visa application; no charges have been filed. Separately, a WiseTech board review found White had misled the board about the nature of several personal relationships. White stepped down as executive chair effective July 7, 2026 while remaining on the board as an executive director and chief innovation officer; independent director Raelene Murphy became chair. WiseTech shares had fallen more than two-thirds since early 2025 amid the reporting, then rose 8.1% on the resignation announcement. A prior 2024-2025 board review had cleared White of separate allegations of misappropriating company funds and improper relationships with staff.

Following months of governance turmoil (an AFP investigation, share-trading blackout allegations, and personal conduct allegations against founder Richard White), WiseTech's board appointed Raelene Murphy as independent chair effective July 7, 2026, with White remaining an executive director and Chief Innovation Officer. While preliminary board review findings cleared White on several matters, the review also confirmed he had misled the board about the nature of certain relationships — a governance failure. Major investor HESTA (A$104B) had publicly warned WiseTech over 'serious governance and leadership issues' in June 2026. No criminal charges had been filed as of the announcement, and White denied the allegations.

The US Department of Justice announced that Alibaba Group and AUS Merchant Services agreed to pay a combined $600 million ($125M criminal penalty plus $200M forfeiture from Alibaba; $85M penalty plus $190M forfeiture from AUS) to resolve allegations that merchants used Alibaba's messaging tools to conduct roughly 80,000 illegal sales of pharmaceuticals, controlled substances, and counterfeiting equipment between January 2016 and December 2024, with combined gross merchandise value exceeding $200 million. DOJ said Alibaba employees had internally flagged inadequate compliance controls, and the company continued to profit from transaction fees on the illegal sales; AUS was found to have merely reported flagged bad actors rather than systematically restricting them, allowing at least one merchant to continue illegal sales after being flagged. No independent monitor was imposed; both companies agreed to enhanced compliance, reporting, and cooperation obligations. The European Commission separately imposed an additional €550 million fine on Alibaba for related conduct in the EU market.

Germany's financial regulator BaFin opened a formal review of Zalando's 2025 consolidated financial statements after finding concrete evidence the company breached accounting rules by omitting a required related-party transaction disclosure from the notes: that Anders Holch Povlsen, Zalando's largest shareholder, also held a significant stake in About You before Zalando's EUR1.13 billion ($1.29 billion) acquisition of it. Shares fell as much as 10.6% on the news before paring losses. Zalando called the omission 'purely formal and materially insignificant,' noting the underlying information was already public via the tender offer documents, and said it was in constructive dialogue with BaFin.

Kakao's labor talks with its union resumed in June 2026 but were clouded by a persistent leadership vacuum at the South Korean tech conglomerate, with workers at multiple Kakao subsidiaries (including Kakao Pay and Kakao Mobility) raising strike threats over stagnant wages, opaque restructuring, and management's failure to commit to negotiated terms. The dispute extended a multi-year pattern of governance turmoil at Kakao following the criminal probe into founder Brian Kim and continued operational instability across the group.

On June 5, 2026 Microsoft published the conclusion of its internal investigation into the Israeli military's use of Azure cloud and other Microsoft products. The review acknowledged prior gaps and committed to strengthening human rights governance procedures, expanding internal escalation paths for misuse allegations, and tightening contract language. Human-rights advocates and Microsoft employees criticized the review as insufficient because it did not commit to terminating identified contracts or publish the underlying findings. The review followed sustained internal organizing and external reporting on mass surveillance of Palestinians via Azure.

On May 18, 2026, after a three-week trial, a jury dismissed all of Musk's claims against OpenAI and Sam Altman on statute of limitations grounds. Musk had sought up to $150 billion in damages, alleging betrayal of OpenAI's nonprofit mission. Musk called it a 'calendar technicality' and vowed to appeal. The verdict resolved a major legal overhang for OpenAI's for-profit conversion.

A securities class action against Globant alleged the company failed to disclose wage freezes imposed on engineering staff in Argentina and Mexico in late 2023, resulting in widespread employee dissatisfaction, service-quality decline, and client losses that were not communicated to investors. The complaint claims investors suffered damages when the underlying Latin American workforce conditions became public.

VinFast signed a share purchase agreement on May 12, 2026 to sell its Vietnamese manufacturing arm (VFTP) for VND 13.3 trillion (~$530M) to an investor group led by Future Investment Research and Development JSC, which has ties to Vingroup and founder/CEO Pham Nhat Vuong, who personally takes a ~4.4% stake in the buyer. The price is roughly 5 times an independent Grant Thornton valuation of VND 2.653 trillion (~$106M), and the deal shifts about $6.9 billion of VinFast's debt onto the buyer group, leaving VinFast asset-light. Pham and his son abstained from the board vote citing conflicts of interest, but SEC filings note the transaction can be approved at the shareholder meeting on the strength of Pham-controlled shares alone, without support from other shareholders.

In May 2026, Byju's founder Byju Raveendran was sentenced to 6 months in jail by a Singapore court. Court filings revealed $533M (44% of a $1.2B loan) went missing from the company, with a judge ruling that Raveendran's brother transferred funds 'with fraudulent intent' to outside accounts. The Indian Supreme Court rejected Byju's attempts to bypass insolvency proceedings. The company's valuation collapsed from $22B to near zero.

On April 26, 2026, Elon Musk filed suit against OpenAI, Sam Altman, and Greg Brockman in U.S. District Court (Northern District of California, Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers) alleging OpenAI betrayed its 2015 founding mission as a nonprofit. Musk claims the shift to a for-profit model in 2019 was unjustified and that Altman and Brockman 'looted' the nonprofit. Musk's original donation was approximately $44 million; he seeks $134-150 billion to be returned to OpenAI's nonprofit arm. The filing states the 'perfidy and deceit are of Shakespearean proportions.' Hearing scheduled for May 15, 2026.

On March 12, 2026, Adobe announced that CEO Shantanu Narayen will step down after 18 years leading the company. Narayen will remain until a successor is found, then transition to board chairman. The departure came amid deep skepticism about Adobe's ability to compete in the AI era. Adobe stock fell more than 8% despite the company reporting record Q1 revenue of $6.4 billion (12% YoY growth). Lead Independent Director Frank Calderoni chairs the successor search committee.

On March 3, 2026, Sam Altman publicly admitted that OpenAI's Pentagon deal announced February 28 was 'opportunistic and sloppy' and announced renegotiations to add explicit prohibitions on domestic surveillance and lethal autonomy without human authorization. Altman also publicly stated that Anthropic should not have been designated a supply chain risk, saying competitors setting ethical limits on military AI 'makes the whole industry better.'