A month or so back, I blogged that I had found several hedge funds using similar blurb in their Stewardship Code statements. This was off the back of digging into Carillion a bit. Then, when I looked a bit deeper at the GKN / Melrose bid, I found more …Read more…
Two interesting things
1. There are two different pieces about shareholder primacy, and why it might be a bad idea, in the FT today. One from the City editor of the FT and one from Rana Foroohar. Meanwhile Theresa May (remember her?) has criticised directors getting paid in …Read more…
Melrose / GKN battle continues
Quite a lot of news on the Melrose bid for GKN today.
Unite, which is campaigning strongly against the bid, held a rally and series of meetings at parliament. It is pleasing to see that a lot of Labour MPs are speaking out against the bid too, and it …Read more…
Melrose / GKN bid arbitrage: like flies round…
The Melrose bid for GKN is currently subject to a lot of scrutiny, and is actively being campaigned against by Unite.
What hasn’t attracted much scrutiny so far (as far as I am aware) is the extent of speculative activity that is occurring, and as suc…Read more…
The Rise of the Working-Class Shareholder: Labor’s Last Best Weapon
Quick plug for a book that will be right up your right if you find my blog interesting… I’ll get a copy and review it on here once I’ve read it….
When Steven Burd, CEO of the supermarket chain Safeway, cut wages and benefits, starting a five-month …Read more…
Rhetoric, politics and executive pay
I’ve been reading Enough Said by Mark Thompson, which is a thoughtful take on political language, and more generally the relationship between the public, politics and the media. I have some minor gripes already, but overall it is well worth a read.
I’…Read more…
What’s reasonable?
I’ve been thinking a bit lately about trying to be a bit more constructive in my approach to corporate governance and “responsible investment”. As anyone who has followed my blog for a while will know, I am thoroughly disenchanted with the 1990s model …Read more…
Can we expect better from investors?
In a move that should surprise no-one, the two parliamentary committees looking into the Carillion collapse have written to some of the companies major shareholders. Among the things that MPs want to know are the extent to which shareholders engaged wi…Read more…
How seriously do hedge funds take the Stewardship Code?
Just stumbled on this. Try Googling “generally supports the objectives that underlie the Code” and “consistent approach”. Someone somewhere drafted this text…
Shorting Carillion and funding the Tories at the same time
Disengaged shareholders
Normal 0 false false false EN-GB JA X-NONE …Read more…
Asset managers shorting their own clients
Hat-tip to the smart people in Labour’s shadow DWP team who have spotted that whilst Blackrock was shorting Carillion it was also managing money for Carillion’s DC scheme.
Inspired by that, I went and had a look at a few other companies on the FCA lis…Read more…
All stakeholder interests align over the long term, not
This was about a month before Ryanair agreed to recognise unions:
“Frankly, most of the shareholders would rather Ryanair doesn’t fly any planes for six months than the workforce becomes unionized,” said Barry Norris, who oversees about $500 million at…Read more…
Fat Cat Day – Ladbrokes special
Today is Fat Cat Day, the day on which the High Pay Centre calculates that the average FTSE100 CEO has “earned” as much as someone on average earnings gets in a year.
As we’re focused on exec pay, I thought I’d contribute an update to a blog I wrote …Read more…
Public ownership and UK pension funds
So, Labour is back in the game of public ownership. Various targets are now talked about for potential nationalisation, or something like it, including rail, the Royal Mail and utility companies. One of the interesting things about Labour’s discussion …Read more…
The emerging new politics of corporate governance and ownership
I wrote a piece a few months ago (prior to the election) saying that I thought that while the Left were unlikely to win the election, we were winning the battle of ideas. I don’t actually think this was a particularly insightful or original take, but i…Read more…
Union investors serve notice on XPO
News from the annual Committee on Workers’ Capital conference, which took place in Berlin this year:
Union investors serve notice on XPOTrade union investors meeting in Berlin today served notice on US-based logistics provider XPO that it must reform …Read more…
ECJ ruling challenges Ryanair’s employment model
Today saw a highly important by the ECJ relating to low-cost airline Ryanair. As many people will know* Ryanair is anti-union. It also relies on extensive use of indirect employment, with many cabin crew employed by agencies like Crewlink, whilst many …Read more…
Adolf Berle on Sports Direct
Adolf Berle, of Berle and Means fame, continued to write interesting things about corporate power and control long after The Modern Corporation and Private Property. The excerpt below is from Power Without Property: A New Development in American Politi…Read more…
Worker directors via the UK Corporate Governance Code
As anyone who reads this blog will probably be aware, the Conservative government bottled its commitment to put workers on boards. Instead it has asked the FRC to amend the UK Corporate Governance Code to give companies three options, one of which is a…Read more…