Directors Quarterly: April 2025

With the post-election landscape still unfolding, navigating the policy and regulatory shifts underway—and assessing the potential upsides and downsides—requires boards and business leaders to be more agile, engaged, and aligned than ever. Cutting through the noise will be challenging. Proactive decision-making amid such uncertainty demands proactive leadership. Stakeholder expectations are also shifting—and shareholders are watching to see how boards respond.

As generative AI (GenAI) tools quickly become ubiquitous, and boards seek to help companies balance the risks and opportunities that the technology poses, we look at the current state of GenAI oversight and offer questions for boards to consider, with insights from the recent KPMG Board Leadership Center (BLC) webcast and director survey.

Geopolitics, tariffs, and political uncertainty remain top of mind for boards as we head into the second quarter. In this edition, we highlight five of the most pressing geopolitical risks facing companies in the near term and their potential impacts.

This quarter, we also explore how audit committee members and CFOs can maintain a strong working relationship as they each grapple with expanding workloads, increased complexity, and ongoing digital disruptions. And for audit committee members, we provide an update on financial reporting and auditing developments that may impact companies in the near term. Finally, we share observations on the M&A environment and the implications for board oversight.