'Non-executive director' - defined
A non-executive director (NED or NXD) is a board position which is typically held by someone who is not a member of the day-to-day management team of a business. Their role is to represent the shareholders of the company at the board.
They also provide independent oversight, challenge and critique of the management team and have a role in corporate governance, deciding on remuneration and composition of the board.
NEDs tend to be very experienced professionally and need to be able to deal sensitively with management which maybe un-used to challenge.
At Connection Capital we typically place one of our staff in a non-executive director role at completion of an investment. However, their role is inevitably biased towards 'looking after the Connection Capital clients' investment'. As a result we also ensure that there is at least one other non-executive in place, one of which will take the board the Chairman role.