Some 31.1% of votes cast at the AGM of Novartis, held in Switzerland on Tuesday, supported the proposal by Ethos and eight other shareholders that the company should provide shareholders with an annual advisory vote on the remuneration report. A further 2.9% of the votes cast were in the form of positive abstentions. In all […]
Read MoreLeading global investors, with assets totalling over $1.3 trillion, have written to US President Barack Obama urging the new administration to implement “critical” legal reforms to US financial markets and corporate governance practices. The institutions, representing the pension savings of some 15 million individuals globally, called for fundamental reforms as a means of restoring investor […]
Read MoreManifest has recently published its findings on voting at UK shareholder meetings in 2008 and this prompted suggestions that we should make a submission to UK’s Treasury Select Committee on the Banking Crisis. The Committee is still taking evidence and we were asked to address the issue of voting at UK Bank AGMs to see […]
Read MoreWhen it comes to incentive pay schemes, it’s rare to encounter a scheme that strays from the ‘tried and trusted’ EPS and TSR performance measures. Anything that seeks to focus to a significant degree on extra-financial performance measures is for all practical purposes non-existent. As the debate on performance-related pay rumbles on, many investors are […]
Read MoreThe chief executives of the country’s largest public companies saw their pay rise by more than a third last year, far faster than most wages across the nat-ion, according to a report. The CEOs of Britain’s 30 richest companies – those with a market value of more than £10bn – received pay rises of 33 […]
Read MoreThe number of executive directors at the UK’s top companies has been declining for five years in a row, with a report from Deloitte showing the number of such positions has fallen by 20% over this period. The report found almost 360 executive roles at FTSE 350 companies have disappeared in the last five years. […]
Read MoreWhile women are enjoying faster career progression than their male colleagues, this is not being matched by their remuneration, and there is evidence efforts to redress the pay gap are beginning to stall, a survey by the Chartered Management Institute (CMI) and Remuneration Economics has found. Women are achieving director roles quicker than men: at […]
Read MoreTop UK companies are increasingly incorporating non-financial factors such as customer satisfaction into executive bonus plans, accountancy firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) has found. PwC’s research revealed that the number of companies offering bonus plans based on purely financial measures has halved over the past year, falling from 33% in 2005/06 to 17% in 2006/07. This has […]
Read MorePension funds surveyed by the National Association of Pension Funds (NAPF) are working more closely with the companies they invest in to actively promote corporate governance. More than three quarters of these funds have helped change remuneration packages, board membership or corporate strategy, and eight out of ten funds believe governance standards are continuing to […]
Read MoreA European Group of Auditors’ Oversight Bodies has been set up by the European Commission. The group will ensure effective coordination of new public oversight systems of statutory auditors and audit firms within the European Union and may also provide technical input to the preparation of the Commission implement the 8th company law directive covering […]
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