Well this is interesting. It turns out that Caledonia Investments hasn’t quite given up on using company money to fund the Tories after all. I speculated last June that they may have given up. My reasons for thinking this were a) they had made no donat…Read more…
More from the Future of Private Enterprise
Here’s a further chunk of text from George Goyder’s book setting out a good case for revisiting company law.
The Companies Act of 1862, on which all subsequent Companies legislation is based, gave to shareholders something which does not in equity belo…Read more…
The richest decide the pay of the richest
There is a great bit of research out today from the TUC on the pay of FTSE100 remuneration committee members. It won’t be any surprise to most people that the executives of FTSE100 companies are amongst the richest in the UK and indeed the world. But w…Read more…
The Future of Private Enterprise
One of the more interesting books I read in the past couple of years is the Future of Private Enterprise by George Goyder. It’s interesting for various reasons. For one, it’s a reminder that when it was published (1954) mainstream views about the natur…Read more…
Fidelity, the Tory-friendly fund manager
As the latest info from the Electoral Commission reveals, Fidelity is still funding the Tories. £25,000 donated in November took their total for 2014 up to £120,000.
They are also still paying Tory MP Sir John Stanley for advice on “business opportunities and risks” at the rate of £1,800 a month…Read more…
Pension funds giving up on hedge funds is just the start
One of the more inexplicable aspects of pension fund behaviour in recent years has been their tolerance for high fees, particularly in relation to alternatives. To state the obvious, high fees – especially where the manager takes a slice of your return…Read more…
Chevron challenged by unions over Gorgon claims
Chevron is telling analysts that everything is under control on the Gorgon LNG projects, despite costs ballooning and it being late. The ITF and MUA have challenged the company to come clean.
ITF: ‘Time For an Honest Conversation from Chevron’The International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF)…Read more…
Pension funds in action
Blogging is light to non-existent currently, but here are three nuggets worth flagging up.
1. Pretty incredible win for investors worried about climate change – Shell has recommended that shareholders vote FOR their resolution at this year’s AGM…Read more…
Why exec pay oversight can be weak
Because I’m a geeky person, I often search Investegate for AGM results. I just found this RNS announcement from Diploma PLC from Wednesday –
All of the resolutions put to shareholders at the Annual General Meeting were passed by poll votes and the resu…Read more…
When unions meet capital markets…
Anyone interested in the capacity for trade unions to mobilise the capital sitting in our pension funds should take a look at the Global Proxy Review produced by the Committee on Workers’ Capital. The Review is intended as a tool for trade union truste…Read more…
Standards-based voting
Just a quick point I think is worth developing. Many asset owners now use passive management for at least a sizeable chunk of their assets, usually equities in developed markets. This seems likely to grow due to a mixture of disillusionment with active…Read more…
Pooled funds, voting and fiduciary duty
As some people will be aware, there is a considerable degree of frustration amongst some asset owners in the UK that they are unable to vote how they want when investing through pooled funds. There isn’t any technical reason why this can’t happen, some…Read more…
Fraud: investor priorities and attitudes
Luigi Zingales has been involved in some interesting work on fraud. In this paper he and co-authors look at who detects and exposes fraud, and they find some perhaps surprising results. Employees are the whistle-blowers most often (and, as such, the su…Read more…
Risk
There’s an interesting article in the Economist about the ‘on-demand’ economy. As you would expect, they are very positive about the rise of things like Uber, but even they recognise that this isn’t a pain-free future. Here are the final few…Read more…
A few New Years thoughts on corporate governance
When I was at the TUC, we once got Brendan Barber on Newsnight as part of a slot on executive pay. I think this was around the time of the GlaxoSmithkline pay defeat in 2003, and I can remember Brendan arguing that shareholder votes on remuneration sho…Read more…
Salience and priorities in responsible investment
I’ve written a couple of bits recently to point up what I think is a bit of a lop-sided approach in the responsible investment world. Specifically, in the UK at least (thought I expect elsewhere too), there is a lot more emphasis on environmental and g…Read more…
Ruling the Void
Ruling the Void, a posthumous sort of finished book by Peter Mair, is one of the most interesting things I have read recently. It covers similar issues to Colin Crouch’s Post-Democracy but with a) some analysis of electoral behaviour to underpin the ar…Read more…
Neo-liberalism
This is a few months old, but well worth a read – an interview with Will Davies (parts 1 and 2). Some choice quotes below that I particularly like/ agree with.
Ultimately what neoliberalism is doing is paradoxical. It is asserting the political l…Read more…
ESG – where are the workers?
There’s an interesting PRI report just published on investor engagement on public policy. It is worth a read. But I thought I’d carry out a little experiment to see the relative emphasis put on different issues as measured by mentions.
Here’s the scor…Read more…
Tony Blair / David Brent
Somehow this –
Blair is frustrated that, for many Britons, Iraq effectively disqualifies him from contributing to this debate. He predicts, however, that this will change: ‘At some point … people will come to see that this is indeed a complicated and difficult argument and [that] this is…Read more…