"There is a tendency to want to know there is an all-knowing, all-seeing, all-powerful directorship that keeps an eye on everything," he said.
By a voice vote, the Senate passed a bill that would create a special shortened term for the directorship that would last through 2012, and made an exception to a law that forbids anyone from serving in the position for more than 10 years.
The opportunity came last fall, Mr. Levin said, when William J. McDonough, president of the New York Fed, and Peter G. Peterson, chairman of its board of directors, approached him about taking over a directorship that was to be vacated by Charles A. Heimbold Jr., chairman and chief executive of Bristol-Myers Squibb.
They and eight others were accused of hiring friends and relatives to fake directorships that paid $150,000 annually.
A 2015 study in The BMJ found that a "substantial number" of academic leaders hold directorships that pay as much as or more than their clinical salaries.
As greater attention has focused on corporate governance, directorships that were once relatively low-paid and essentially honorary positions have become demanding and well compensated.
But it can go some way to replicating the book contracts and lecture tours and non-executive directorships that are on offer to ex-leaders in the west.
With Google expanding its mobile-phone and computing businesses, antitrust regulators have started an inquiry into directorships that straddle both companies.Rupert Murdoch said he expected that all of his websites would charge users for access within a year, despite his previous commitment that only some sites would experiment with such charges.
It was the first time during his directorship that he had invited a company that consisted entirely of trained dancers.
October 20 2015 October 22 201515 Andris Nelsons, only in his thirties, recently accepted a second major music directorship (that of the storied Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra) in addition to his still-fresh commitment to the B.S.O., an orchestra that, after a decade of tumult, could seriously use a grand and unifying vision.
