The Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change has called for urgent action to boost the effectiveness of carbon markets and the mitigation of climate change risk in developing countries in their recent report ‘Toward an Effective Global Carbon Market’. The European group, representing over €4tr, identifies the need for strong pricing signals to further encourage […]
Read MoreUnited Kingdom The Department for Business, Enterprise & Regulatory Reform has published a revised draft of the regulations to implement the Shareholder Rights Directive. Please send any final comments on the revised draft regulations to Kate Gillies (kate.gillies@berr.gsi.gov.uk) by Friday 29 May. Ireland The Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment has published the Draft Shareholders Rights […]
Read MoreThe advisory vote on the remuneration report at AGM of OZ Minerals on 11 June is expected to see a very significant protest vote following the AU$10m severance payment received by former Oxiana CEO, Owen Hegarty, during the year. The payment was made despite a majority of proxies lodged being voted against a resolution to […]
Read MoreFrom the self-styled “Wall Street Tabloid” DealBreaker ….in the face of mounting losses and some very poor risk management very few corporate heads have actually been tossed by shareholders. Government, of course, has been more “effective” in this regard. Still, of the vanishingly small pool of shareholder executed CEO defenestrations CEO pay has played a […]
Read MoreFTSE 100 bosses are paying themselves “footballers’ salaries” out of proportion with the rest of the market according to a report from pay consultants MM&K and governance group Manifest. The increase in total pay for chief executives and senior directors of the UK’s largest companies is “on a curve to infinity” as management fight to […]
Read MoreAn oil giant’s shareholders flex their muscles MOST firms’ annual general meetings (AGMs) owe more to North Korea than ancient Greece. By long-standing tradition, bosses make platitudinous speeches, listen to lone dissidents with the air of psychiatric nurses towards patients and wait for their own proposals to be rubber-stamped by the proxy votes of obedient […]
Read MoreDid the Lloyds board act with sufficient care on the HBOS deal? Manifest takes a look at the legal aspects of directors’ duties in the context of one of this century’s most politically charged takeovers. The 2006 Companies Act for the first time codified a number of long established common law principles relating to the […]
Read MoreThe Irish Independent and the Daily Telegraph have picked up Manifest’s story about the Ryanair shareholder resolutions at Aer Lingus’ upcoming AGM. “The Manifest Proxy Voting agency, a company that monitors corporate governance here and in the UK, has alleged that Ryanair is the only company not to reveal on its website how shareholders voted […]
Read MoreMears Group, which moved its listing from AIM to the Official List in June 2008, has fallen significantly short of the requirements of the UK Companies Act in the drafting of its remuneration report for the 2008 financial year. As a main market company, Mears is now obliged to meet the requirements of Schedule 7A of […]
Read MoreThe dominance of the Big 4 audit firms continues to be a cause for concern according to a report by the UK’s reporting and governance watchdog, the Financial Reporting Council. The FRC has published the third of its Progress Reports outlining the progress of the 15 recommendations made by the Market Participants Group (MPG) in October 2007 […]
Read More