  We study the networks formed by the directors of the most important Swiss
boards and the boards themselves for the year 2009. The networks are obtained
by projection from the original bipartite graph. We highlight a number of
important statistical features of those networks such as degree distribution,
weight distribution, and several centrality measures as well as their
interrelationships. While similar statistics were already known for other board
systems, and are comparable here, we have extended the study with a careful
investigation of director and board centrality, a k-core analysis, and a
simulation of the speed of information propagation and its relationships with
the topological aspects of the network such as clustering and link weight and
betweenness. The overall picture that emerges is one in which the topological
structure of the Swiss board and director networks has evolved in such a way
that special actors and links between actors play a fundamental role in the
flow of information among distant parts of the network. This is shown in
particular by the centrality measures and by the simulation of a simple
epidemic process on the directors network.
