Similarly, whereas in the United Kingdom/Commonwealth model the roles of the board chairman and the chief executive officer are separated, in the United States they are often held by the same person, although there have been some calls for separation, as we saw in Case Study 3.3 in Chapter 3. The board of Exxon Mobil had resisted a strong big from shareholders in recent years to split the roles of chairman and chief executive-but, even if passed by a majority of shareholders voting, the decision would not be binding on the board. Interestingly, in the now infamous case of the failed company Enron (See Appendix 2), the roles of chairman of the board and CEO were separated.