Companies Archives

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, …

Shareholders call for companies to respond to environmental concerns

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 …

SEC says Exxon and Chevron must accept climate change shareholder proposals at annual meetings

The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has ruled that oil giants, ExxonMobil and Chevron, need to include shareholder proposals at their AGMs requesting information on the impact on their businesses of the policies on reducing carbon emissions and responding …

Still work to do to break up old boy networks says UK’s Equality and Human Rights Commission

UK companies continue to use personal networks when recruiting board members, which acts as a barrier to women becoming directors, according to an inquiry by the Equality and Human Rights Commission.

The study found that while the overall target set …

UK Financial Reporting Council pre-AGM alert to investors on company reporting

The UK’s Financial Reporting Council (FRC) has written to institutional investors highlighting the key issues they should be considering ahead of the peak season of company shareholder meetings.

The letter from Stephen Hadrill, FRC chief executive, reminded investors that this …

Remuneration looks set to be an issue at upcoming UK AGMs

With the peak AGM season taking place in the next two months, Manifest’s analysis suggests investors may be concerned about the remuneration practices at some of the UK’s biggest companies holding their AGMs on 14th April.

Mining company, Rio Tinto …

UK boards start to take values and ethics more seriously

Audit committees are increasingly overloaded and UK companies are looking at other way to monitor corporate responsibility (CR) and sustainability issues, according to a report published by the Institute of Business Ethics (IBE).

An IBE survey of the FTSE 350 …

Facebook to pay more tax in the UK while FTSE 100 tax take drops

It has been widely reported that social media giant Facebook is changing its tax structure in Europe which will result in it paying higher levels of tax in the UK. The profits from the majority of Facebook’s advertising revenue initiated …

Academics argue for a stop to paying top executives for performance

Top executive pay should not be linked to performance as the work they do is difficult to measure and such pay may actually be damaging to companies, according to a recent article by two academics in the Harvard Business Review.…

Corporate Governance Scorecard for India

The International Finance Corporation (IFC), part of the World Bank, and BSE (formerly the Bombay Stock Exchange) are working together to develop a corporate governance scorecard which will help Indian companies assess their corporate governance performances against national or international-benchmarked …