Thank you for downloading this program. After corporate scandals like VW's emissions cheating or Tesco's accounting irregularities,

many have been asking why the firm's directors failed to act. Well, in this edition of the bottom line, we look at how company boards operate and how to make them work.

Hello and welcome to the program.

A lot of us have experience of sitting in a meeting with maybe a dozen or more other people.

We know the difference between a constructive meeting and a waste of time.

We know how committees can make decisions or duck them.

Well today we're going to focus on a particular kind of committee and a particular kind of meeting.

We're looking at company boards.

Some are constructive, some are waste of time, some make decisions, some duck them.

The difference between boards and the meetings most of us are used to

is that boards are stewards of hundreds of billions, trillions actually, of pounds worth of national assets.

They run companies, they almost run the world. So let's get some insight as to how boards work or fail to work.

My three guests have all got their own boardroom experience in companies big and small. Let's meet them.

And first off, Sir David Walker.

He's worked in banking and finance for more than 50 years.

He was chairman of Barclays post-crisis up until April 2015.

And is also well known for the 2009 Walker report into how UK banks should be managed.

That was prompted by the financial crisis.

And David, just tell us about that review into corporate governance.

Well, the financial crisis, Evan, was a huge shock to everybody, politicians, media, banks,

customers. There was, of course, a great scurrying round to find who was responsible, and there was a lot of finger-pointing.

Almost everybody was involved, wanted to give greater weight to the role of other people.

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