Climate Change, Shareholder Voting and ESG-factor awareness are clearly(!) topics close to our heart. With the recent DWP changes to Occupational Pension Scheme legislation in the UK, and the introduction Europe-wide of the Shareholders Rights Directive II, there’s a lot going on in the stewardship area at the moment. It seems to us that there’s […]
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SEC’s Clayton attacks lack of global commitment to combatting corruption The chairman of the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has launched a blistering attack on his foreign counterparts for failing to tackle offshore corruption. During his speech at the Economic Club of New York on Monday (9 September), Jay Clayton warned there was a […]
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FRC promises corporate governance and reporting crackdown The Financial Reporting Council (FRC) is to expand its monitoring of corporate governance and reporting standards as it considers the effectiveness of its new governance code. In its annual report for the year ending 31 March 2019, the FRC said it will continue to tackle poor-quality audit work, […]
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Big Four fail in one in five audits The world’s four biggest accounting firms have been exposed for botching at least 20% of their audits following an inspection by the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB). In the most recent annual inspections of the Big Four, inspectors discovered Deloitte botched 20% of audits examined, PricewaterhouseCoopers […]
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Major UK pensions sign up to cost disclosure initiative Ten of the UK’s biggest pension schemes have written a joint letter publicly announcing their commitment to the Cost Transparency Initiative. Launched in November 2018, the Initiative encourages asset managers to report their costs and charges in a standardised format to help institutional investors access and […]
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Rise in companies deviating from Swedish governance code The Board’s 2019 Annual Report, published this week, revealed that over a third (34 per cent) of companies that apply the Code reported at least one deviation in 2018, up from 29 per cent in 2017. The Swedish Corporate Governance Board has reported a rise in the […]
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Minerva backs key industry Summit Minerva Analytics has sponsored this year’s flagship LGC Investment and Pensions Summit. As Europe’s best-known independent provider of global research and proxy voting solutions, Minerva will sponsor the summit’s end of conference podcast which summarises the discussions from this year’s event. The event, which kicked off on 5 September 2019 […]
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Median CEO pay falls, but is this the full story? When it comes to corporate governance, no topic is more contentious than the pay of top CEOs. The debate over whether companies pay their top executives excessively high salaries has been raging for years. Couple this with research from Edelman Trust showing that nearly two-thirds […]
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High performing fund managers overlooked… if they’re black Investors are being urged to tackle institutional racism after a major study found black fund managers are often overlooked due to their colour – even when they are high performing. The study, published last week by Stanford University and venture capital firm Illumen Capital, found evidence of racial […]
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RSM fined $950k for independence breach Accounting firm RSM US has been fined $950,000 by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for violating the auditor independence rules. RSM US, a member firm of the RSM International (RSMI) network with more than 80 offices across the country, was judged to have violated the strict rules when […]
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Law Commission opens consultation on intermediated securities The Law Commission has published a call for evidence on intermediated securities, the first step in a scoping study, and asked stakeholders for their views and experiences. With the intention of informing public debate and to develop a broader understanding of options for reform, the scoping study focuses […]
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