For Corporate Boards, a Global Search

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companies with historically strong international sales, like IBM, Coke, and P&G, have leaned more toward Latin America than Asia, says Charles Geoly, a managing director at headhunter Russell Reynolds Associates. Among all the board seats at the 500 largest U.S. companies in 2006, just 81 were filled by Asians and Asian Americans, according to a report last year by the Committee of 100, a group of Chinese American business leaders.

Seeking Candidates with the Right Background

Indeed, finding candidates with the right experience, wherewithal to endure frequent round-the-world travel to board meetings, and the stomach for Western shareholder activism can be tough, recruiters say. "There's a big difference between what boards would like to do, and see as relevant and important, and what they're actually able to do," Mader says.

Travel can be particularly onerous for directors who need to hunker down for marathon flights a half-dozen times a year or more. And some candidates are nervous about putting their personal wealth at risk in potential shareholder lawsuits, headhunters say. Compounding recruitment is the difficulty of finding emerging-market nationals with the background to serve on Western boards. The average director of a company in the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index is about 62 years old, which means if they have international experience, it's likely to be in Europe, says Julie Hembrock Daum, the North America board practice leader at search firm Spencer Stuart. "The technology they grew up with and the markets they grew up with are different," says Daum, who's recruiting Asians for board seats at Western companies. Executives with the most on-the-ground experience in India and China tend to be midcareer, and not yet ready to get off the fast track for a board seat.

One answer has been recruiting country experts who aren't natives. John Thornton, the former president of Goldman Sachs, teaches at Beijing's Tsinghua University, is an authority on Asian business, and sits on the boards of Intel (INTC), Ford (F), and News Corp. (NWS).

Korn/Ferry's Mader has another idea for overcoming the obstacles preventing Indians, Chinese, and other developing world leaders from governing Western firms. He's recruiting an Asian director for one of the largest U.S. industrial companies, and talking to other U.S. organizations' Asia division presidents who understand American business, and are high enough up on the food chain that they spend a lot of time in the States anyway. "You start knocking down the issues," he says. "Most of that stuff disappears for these people."

Ricadela is a writer for BusinessWeek.com in Silicon Valley.