The United Nations (UN) held a ceremony at its headquarters in New York for countries to formally sign up to the climate change agreement that was made in Paris at the end of last year. The Paris Agreement enters into force once 55 countries representing 55% of global emissions have deposited their instruments of accession with […]

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The 2016 AGM season started with major defeats for two FTSE100 companies. Last Thursday (14th April) oil giant BP and medical equipments supplier, Smith & Nephew saw their remuneration reports rejected by shareholders at their AGMs. At the BP AGM there was a 59% vote against the remuneration report and at Smith & Nephew 53% of shareholder votes […]

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Persimmon seeks to blame proxy advisors for NED’s slim majority Construction firm, Persimmon, faced significant opposition in the vote to elect Nigel Mills as one their non-executive directors. There was a 47% vote against Mills’ appointment, due to independence concerns, at the company’s AGM last week, one of the slimmest margins for a director appointment for some […]

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Respondents have until 22nd April to comment on a  revised corporate governance code for Mauritius. Its national committee on corporate governance said the new code, developed by a team led by governance expert Dr Chris Pierce, is comprised of eight principles forming the core of the code and each principle should be applied in the best […]

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Taiwan’s Financial Supervisory Commission has published the Securities and Futures Institute’s second evaluation of Taiwan’s  5-year Corporate Governance Roadmap published in December 2013. This is an assessment of the corporate governance of 1,447 companies in 2015 – made up of  824 TWSE-listed companies and 623 listed on the Taipei Exchange (TPEx). Half of these companies have then been ranked according to the adherence to Taiwan’s corporate […]

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Investors vote on the first of three shareholder resolutions proposed at Rio Tinto, Anglo American and Glencore AGMs this week calling for reporting by these mining companies into how they are managing carbon emissions and investing in low-carbon energy research and development. Rio Tinto at its AGM last Thursday (14th April) was the first company […]

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French regulator AMF has found that France is the only country where governance codes are drawn up by bodies representing issuers and where code amendment to its code are not subject to a prior public consultation on the website of the entity responsible for drafting the code. The French financial regulator, the Autorite des Marches Financiers (AMF) has published […]

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Changes may be needed to ensure audit teams have the right skills in the future and there needs to be an open and constructive debate on the future of audit findings from two international studies produced for the UK’s Financial Reporting Council and ICAS show. ICAS and the FRC commissioned the research in 2013 and this […]

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The Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures set up by the Financial Standards Board has outlined the principles and objectives for its work. In its first report the Task Force said that despite a range of initiatives the existing climate-related disclosure remained fragmented and incomplete and there was only a limited number of reporting regimes focusing on […]

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Railpen veteran, Frank Curtiss, who was most recently been its head of corporate governance, has retired. The pension fund has been at the forefront of active institutional investment and was one of the first to vote actively on its equity holdings in the UK and published a voting and corporate governance policy in 1992. Curtiss joined Railpen in […]

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