Hat-tip to Responsible Investor for a fascinating news story about Dutch bank De Volksbank considering giving stakeholders such as employees and customers a vote at their AGM alongside shareholders. This is framed in terms of shift away from shareholde…Read more…
Asset managers and stakeholders
There’s a proliferation of comment pieces from asset managers lately seeking to demonstrate that they “get it” when it comes to lack of trust in business and finance. A lot of these simply re-tread the same ground, with more exhortations to more stewar…Read more…
Labour pains
I can’t find anything positive in the news that seven MPs have left Labour and will now stand against it. Although I disagree with the politics of most of the seven, if you believe that cognitive diversity has value you have to think that Labour becomi…Read more…
Asset managers and worker directors
The more I’ve been digging around for info on workers on boards, the more interesting things I find. For example, I had heard a rumour a while back that ATOS was thinking about appointing a UK employee director. And it turns out that they did. In fact …Read more…
Workers on boards round-up 2
As I’ve blogged quite a lot recently, I think the ground is shifting with regards to the UK corporate governance model. Specifically, the issue of employee and other stakeholder representation is being debated increasingly frequently.
Although there i…Read more…
Executive pensions & UK corp gov
Well over a decade ago, when I worked at the TUC, we started carrying out a survey of directors’ pensions entitlements in the FTSE100. This was because we were aware that many directors still had DB pensions when these schemes were being closed for sta…Read more…
Inequality, depression, unions
Today someone mentioned Angus Deaton and it reminded me of this interview with him in the FT which I always meant to blog about. It’s two years old now, and took place just after Trump’s victory, but there are several bits that really resonate with me….Read more…
George Orwell’s pay ratio
This, from The Lion and the Unicorn, popped into my head the other day:
II. Incomes. Limitation of incomes implies the fixing of a minimum wage, which implies a managed internal currency based simply on the amount of consumption-goods availab…Read more…
Shareholders vs Ryanair: Gone-derman
I think that’s called a win:Having agreed this group strategy as the best way to grow Ryanair, Sun, Lauda and other possible airline brands, Michael O’Leary has agreed a new 5 year contract as Group CEO, which secures his services for the group until a…Read more…
Shareholders vs Ryanair
Interesting snippet from the Investor Forum annual report:
"corporate governance zealots"
There’s a bit of a daft bit in the Sunday Times today from Patience Wheatcroft. It argues that “corporate governance zealots” will drive directors of PLCs towards private equity, where there is less hassle/scrutiny. The argument is that we don’t want t…Read more…
BlackRock short position in AA Plc
I find this weirdly fascinating. At 4.61% Blackrock’s short in AA Plc is by far its largest current short position. The second largest is half the size – 2.26% in Go-Ahead Group. And it’s been steadily heading up over the past year.
I think it’s Blac…Read more…
Stock-lending and shorting, again
I’ve been thinking a bit more about the potential conflicts of interest around stock-lending and shorting in light of the RD:IR paper I blogged about a couple of weeks back. It suggested that passive managers are in part able to offer lower fees becaus…Read more…
Infrastructure investment politics 2
I’ve blogged a couple of times before about the political challenges facing investment in infrastructure. In the last couple of days there have been a couple more news stories that show how sharp these issues are getting.
First up, the FT ran a piece …Read more…
Loyalty: a few initial thoughts
This tweet from Which? caught my eye the other day, and is something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately:
The tweet (which is currently pinned!) referred to the cost of sticking with the same broadband providers, and it reminded me of a similar tw…Read more…
More short stuff
Again, huge caveat that the data in these charts is only 0.5%+ short positions, but some interesting stuff I think. At the end of play yesterday the FCA had disclosed 581 current short positions of 0.5% and above in UK shares. So I looked at which firm…Read more…
Long, short and managing the pension scheme
Even More Duplicate Reporting 2: The Boilerplate Strikes Back
Neptune (looks like an old statement, but hey)
We will continue any dialogue with the company over an extended period where deemed necessary. Escalation of our engagement activities, including any engagement with other investors, will depend on the co…Read more…
Even more duplicate reporting…
Well, here’s something. In a previous blog I noted that Liontrust Asset Management is apparently both a Tier 1 and a Tier 2 signatory of the Stewardship Code (though the statement is the same in both links).
Well, I had a bit of a Google around and I …Read more…
More hedge fund cut ‘n’ paste fun
I had some fun last year exposing the boilerplate blah that many hedge funds (and a few bigger firms) were using to “explain” their non-compliance with the Stewardship Code. Many thanks to Responsible Investor for recently giving this a plug.
Anyway, …Read more…