The New York Stock Exchange has defended its apparent backtracking on the issue of director independence in the final draft of its proposed corporate governance rules.

At the beginning of this month, the NYSE released the final version of the proposed changes, which were prompted by corporate scandals such as Enron and WorldCom. The biggest single change in the original draft was that all NYSE-listed companies would have to appoint a majority of independent directors to their boards to offer a best-checking mechanism on omnipotent chief executives.