Ruth Simmons joined Goldman Sachs’s board as an outside director in January 2000; a year later she became president of Brown Uni

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问题     Ruth Simmons joined Goldman Sachs’s board as an outside director in January 2000; a year later she became president of Brown University. For the rest of the decade she apparently managed both roles without attracting much criticism. But by the end of 2009 Ms. Simmons was under fire for having sat on Goldman’s compensation committee; how could she have let those enormous bonus payouts pass unremarked? By February the next year Ms. Simmons had left the board. The position was taking up too much time, she said.
    Outside directors are supposed to serve as helpful, yet less biased, advisers on a firm’s board. Having made their wealth and their reputations elsewhere, they presumably have enough independence to disagree with the chief executive’s proposals. If the sky, and the share price, is falling, outside directors should be able to give advice based on having weathered their own crises.
    The researchers from Ohio University used a database that covered more than 10,000 firms and more than 64,000 different directors between 1989 and 2004. Then they simply checked which directors stayed from one proxy statement to the next. The most likely reason for departing a board was age, so the researchers concentrated on those "surprise" departure, the probability that the company will subsequently have to restate earnings increases by nearly 20%. The likelihood of being named in a federal class-action lawsuit also increases, and the stock is likely to perform worse. The effect tended to be larger for larger firms. Although a correlation between them leaving and subsequent bad performance at the firm is suggestive, it does not mean that such directors are always jumping off a sinking ship. Often they "trade up," leaving riskier, smaller firms for larger and more stable firms.
    But the researchers believe that outside directors have an easier time of avoiding a blow to their reputations if they leave a firm before bad news breaks, even if a review of history shows they were on the board at the time any wrongdoing occurred. Firms who want to keep their outside directors through tough time may have to create incentives. Otherwise outside directors will follow the example of Ms. Simmons, once again very popular on campus.
According to Paragraph 1, Ms. Simmons was criticized for______.

选项 A、gaining excessive profits
B、failing to fulfill her duty
C、refusing to make compromises
D、leaving the board in tough times

答案B

解析 本题信息点是Ms.Simmons was criticized(Simmons受到批评),该信息出现在第一段第三句话…Simmons was under fire…中,其中under fire意为“受到攻击”,即“受到批评”之意。根据原因题的解题技巧,我们先看到本句中for having sat on Goldman’s compensation committee(在高盛薪酬委员会担任职务)是一个事实陈述;同时,分号“;”表明该句与下句为并列关系,从而我们知道下句how could she have let those enormous bonus payouts pass unremarked(她怎么能让那些巨额奖金支出得以通过而没有引起注意呢?)是她受到批评的原因。由此可见她作为薪酬委员会的成员未能阻止巨额奖金的发放,即:未能很好地履行其职责。所以选项B为本题答案。
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