All the union news that's fit to blog...
It’s election time. I’ll have a look through party manifestos when they’re out to pull together policy commitments that are relevant to this blog. In the meantime, here are a few rehashed thoughts about what I’d like to see as a Left platform.
1. Empl…Read more…
There’s a lot of commentary from a lot of sources these days arguing against a shareholder-centric corporate governance model. So far, the commentary is far ahead of any policy, and certainly in the US there is scepticism about the motives of those – l…Read more…
It’s been a few years since I read in depth about reward and motivation. I basically got to the point where I think most performance-related pay is junk, as are most of the ‘reforms’ advocated, because there is little attempt to engage with the psychol…Read more…
Perhaps I’m grasping at straws, but I can’t shake the feeling that attitudes toward trade unions are shifting amongst some key groups, and that this might point to a more hopeful future.
In politics the direction of travel is most clear. Obviously Lab…Read more…
Just a bit of Excel fun on a Sunday lunchtime. In its relatively short life as a public company, Patisserie Holdings didn’t issue that many market announcements, so it’s easy to pull together TR1 notices. I know that BlackRock had a big long position t…Read more…
I read this recently, which is worth checking out. Here are a few quick chunks that feel very relevant (all from Bauman):
“[T]he mistrust of all and any order, synchronic and diachronic alike; questioning of the idea of ‘order’ as such; the tendency t…Read more…
I like this (from this):
To affirm the perpetuity of contest is not to celebrate a world without points of stabilisation; it is to affirm the reality of perpetual contest, even within an ordered setting, and to identify the affirmative dimensions of co…Read more…
Obviously, I’ve not been blogging much lately, but something I’ve been spending a bit of time looking at is dividend arbitrage. In it its most well-known version, this is the practice of shifting stock around the ex dividend in order minimise tax payab…Read more…
Something I’ve been thinking about a bit lately is how disconnected responsible investment is from the rest of the world. There is a tidal wave of marketing for ESG products and services currently storming through the financial services industry, yet i…Read more…
Over the past few weeks there has been quite a lot of interest in the extent to which UK companies are giving employees a say in corporate governance. As most people will know, the revised UK Corporate Governance Code that came into force this year enc…Read more…
One of of the things I find myself spending time reading and thinking about lately is the interaction between concentration of companies (or oligopoly) within industries, and concentration of ownership of those same companies.
There have been a number…Read more…
I was interested to see a piece in City AM recently from Robert Colvile of the Centre for Policy Studies about Labour’s plans for nationalisation of utilities. I’m interested in this issue as it cuts across politics and ownership, which is, obviously, …Read more…
There have been a few developments over the past week or two that play into the argument I’ve been making that 1990s-style corporate governance is come under serious pressure to change.
1. Polling from the resolutely centrist Progressive Cen…Read more…
A few months back I blogged some initial thoughts about the idea of loyalty. To recap, I find it jarring that various bodies increasingly try and encourage us to be disloyal. While I get that it’s silly to be ‘loyal’ to a utility provider (or insert yo…Read more…
I blogged last year that I thought the position of shareholders relative to other stakeholders was going to come into sharper focus in politics. Here’s a piece from my favourite newspaper this weekend to make the point:
It’s a pretty simple message:…Read more…
Easter is one of those special times of the year when we get to spend time with family members we don’t see often enough… and to be deeply shocked at how differently even close relatives view the world.
I’m a fully paid-up metropolitan lefty Remaine…Read more…
a little snippet from Globalization: The Human Consequences:
Ideally, nothing should be embraced by a consumer firmly, nothing should command a commitment till death do us part, no needs should be seen as fully satisfied, no desires considered ultimate…Read more…
Wisconsin Democrat Senator Tammy Baldwin has issued a report calling for workers to elect a third of the board of directors.
The aggregate evidence from comparison countries provides strong support for the theory that worker empowerment can foster seve…Read more…
If there were any doubt the idea of employee representation at board level is gaining momentum in some unusual places, then take a look at this:
Murray believes that, if there had been a meaningful number of people with a stake in Walmart’s longer-term…Read more…
Another issue I am starting to look at in more detail is the overlap between stock-lending, shorting and other activity. I was recently pointed in the direction of some of BlackRock’s literature on stock-lending and it fed my sense that at least parts …Read more…