Hot Issues Archives

SEC gets to grips with proxy plumbing

Fair corporate suffrage is an important right that should attach to every equity security
Source: United States Congress, 1934

There’s no small irony that the first shareholder voting regulations were introduced in the aftermath of ‘The Great Crash’. Now, another

Invisible democracy hits Italian board slates

Investment bank Mediobanca is said to have reached a unanimous agreement on the Assicurazioni Generali board list which will include a new chairman for Europe’s third biggest insurer.

Generali is, as the FT puts it “arguably Italy’s most important financial …

SEC ready to review US proxy plumbing

Mary Schapiro, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission is a step closer to straightening out America’s proxy plumbing. In a speech made at the Stanford University Law School Directors College on June 20th, Schapiro outlined the Commission’s current thinking.…

US financial reform horse trading hits investors

As elected representatives in the US enter the final stages of merging the two competing financial services reform bills, investors are becoming increasingly anxious that their key reform proposal, access to the proxy, will be rendered useless.

From the outset, …

Pages: 1 2

What can the Maori meaning of governance teach us?

As Western economies tie themselves in knots trying to protect financial markets from future harm and arguing about what role governance plays in that process, commentators have been struggling to define governance and who should be responsible for it. We …

Wyser-Pratte challenges outcome of Lagardère AGM

The activist shareholder Guy Wyser-Pratte has challenged the outcome of the AGM of Lagardère, held on 27 April, and requested the French market regulator, the AMF, to verify the procedures for the transmission of the votes submitted to the meeting.…

Combined Code consultation responses now available

The Financial Reporting Council (FRC) has published the responses to its recent consultation on the UK’s corporate governance code. A total of 117 responses have been made available, of which 37 are from quoted companies directly and 14 from investors …

The Reg FD Shareholder Dialogue Myth – Busted

As Prudential has recently found to its cost, it’s generally worth while keeping shareholders in the loop. Whereas UK and European companies are generally welcoming of investor dialogue to the extent it is enshrined in national governance codes, any meaningful …

US pension funds fight to keep proxy reforms on the table

CalPERS and 20 other public pension plans have written to key US lawmakers urging them to keep corporate governance provisions in the final version of a proposed financial regulations reform bill.

The US House of Representatives and Senate have each …