All the union news that's fit to blog...
I’ve blogged a lot previously about the many links that exist between the asset manager Fidelity and the Conservative Party. I’ve just discovered a new one that provides a bit more insight into how significant the relationship is.
The Leader’s Group i…Read more…
Across the world we can see conservative political parties engaged in an attempt to destroy the power of unions in the workplace, weaken their resources and squeeze their financial support reformist political parties. This is a concerted attempt to des…Read more…
Short-termism, on the part of corporates and investors, is an issue that apparently will just not go away. The first wave of criticism seems to have broken in the early 1990s. Michael Porter’s work on the subject is probably most famous, but also worth…Read more…
A few quick thoughts from my corner of the world (corp gov etc) –
Introduce requirement for profit-sharing and/or employee share-ownership, to ensure that wealth is divided more evenly in line with contribution before we get to the tax & benefits …Read more…
Thought I’d try and blog a few of my own thoughts about the Labour leadership etc, since no-one else seems to be voicing an opinion…
Something like this has been on the cards for a long time. A lot has been written about the fraying of party loyalti…Read more…
This comment from Keith Hellawell is almost too good:
“This is not Mr Ashley’s company,” Hellawell replied. “He is a major shareholder, but it has a life of its own. I can assure you that we on the board, unless Mike wants to disagree with me, are satisfied.”
From The GrauniadRead more…
Sports Direct had its annual general meeting today. Coverage of the AGM has been dominated by criticism of the company’s governance, its remuneration policy and its employment practices. A quick google shows how much criticisms of employment practices …Read more…
DCT Gdansk is a new deepwater port development in Poland. It is majority owned by Macquarie’s Global Infrastructure Fund II, with several Australian superannuation funds amongst the investors, along with another infrastructure manager/adviser Whitehelm…Read more…
Unions in the UK increasing capital strategies activity – TUSO calls time on poor corp gov and employment practices at Sports Direct. TUC release (from here) below –
The Trade Union Share Owners (TUSO) group has today called on shareholders at Sport…Read more…
This is massively off topic, but I thought it deserved a blog. I follow a few Aussie unions, union leaders, activists etc on Twitter and this morning I saw people from the CFMEU tweeting about a story in the Murdoch-owned Herald Sun.
The story sa…Read more…
I’ve only followed the progress of the Shareholder Rights Directive at a distance, but it strikes me that it provides a fairly important indicator that something is up. The abandonment of the ‘One share, one vote’ principle, and the encour…Read more…
“[T]he power of enclosing land and owning property was brought into the creation by your ancestors by the sword; which first did murder their fellow creatures, men, and after plunder or steal away their land, and left this land successively to you, the…Read more…
A few years back, I noticed that the phrase “a force for good” was being used with remarkable consistency by people in, or working with, the private equity industry. So I thought I’d do a quick google to see if that was still the case. No real surprise…Read more…
I’ve had a response from the FRC, which has been in touch with the company. Apparently the company “confirms” that it has not made any donations since 2010. However, as of today the two donations are still on the Electoral Commission website and attrib…Read more…
The news that some companies are sounding out investors about steep increases in base salary in response to longer deferral periods should come as a shock to no-one. Here’s The Grauniad from yesterday:
Some of the UK’s biggest companies are sounding out shareholders about pay rises for their bosses…Read more…
Last week Michael O’Leary lost an important battle when a Danish labour ruled, if I understand it rightly, that workers at Copenhagen airport can take secondary action against Ryanair.
This is in response to the notoriously anti-union company’s latest…Read more…
There is a very good piece by Anthony Hilton in the Standard today taking a swing at the mainstream corp gov approach to executive pay. No surprise, but I agree with pretty much all of it but there’s one thing in particular that leapt out today –
The b…Read more…
So far no-one has come back and said I’m talking rubbish about Caledonia Investments’ failure to disclose political donations in its annual report. The company’s AGM is coming up in two weeks, and the first item on the agenda is the approval of the ann…Read more…
A few years back, when I was blogging more regularly, Afren was one of the companies I always used to keep an eye on. This was because it clearly had some governance challenges, not least in respect of directors’ pay.
As far as I am aware it remains t…Read more…
A couple of weeks back I blogged that Caledonia Investments had made two separate donations of £2000 to the Conservative Party – received in December 2014 and mid March 2015.
To be crystal clear, according to the Electoral Commission the first donation was received on 12 December 2014, the second…Read more…