CWC Mid-Year Virtual RoundtableBetween June 8-10th, 2021 the CWC will host two 90 minute virtual brainstorming events to engage with its global network.
We will review how leading asset owners are integrating labour rights at a tim…Read more…
Capitalism: down with the sickness
I’m just a humble labour & corpgov wonk, so most of the time the kinds of things that interest me are buried in the business pages. But it feels like, as with the financial crisis, questions about who controls businesses and how, and in whose inter…Read more…
Workers on boards: high-risk inaction
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…
Monopoly industries, monopoly owners
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…
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:
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…
The challenge (to unions) of pension fund ‘socialism’
The Unseen Revolution by Peter Drucker is (like the Modern Corporation and Private Property) one of those books that has had a big influence on the world in which I inhabit, but also which is often misunderstood. Lots of people have probably heard the …Read more…
Voting different ways on the same stock
There’s always a danger that a) if pension funds delegate voting rights to asset managers and b) if they appoint multiple asset managers then they may end up voting different ways on the same stock.
Googling around for something completely different t…Read more…
Labour’s mini Meidner plan
It’s been an interesting day for those of us on the Left with an interest in issues of governance and ownership. At Labour conference it has been announced that a future Labour government would both mandate that workers form a third of the board o…Read more…
Ryanair AGM in charts…
Just a bit of fun, but I’ve put together a few bits and pieces that put the vote on David Bonderman’s re-election of chair of Ryanair in context.
To calculate the stats I’ve used the full AGM results distributed by the company, and stripped out Bonder…Read more…
Unions call for Ryanair chairman to go
ITF and ETF call for new Ryanair chairmanThe International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF) and European Transport Workers’ Federation (ETF) are calling for shareholders to oppose the re-election of Ryanair chairman David Bonderman and overhaul the …Read more…
Shareholder primacy and utilities
A theme I think anyone with an interest in corporate governance should keep an eye on is the way that the interests of investors in a firm in relation to others are portrayed in financial media and elsewhere.
Under the 1990s model it was common to see…Read more…
Ryanair & employment-related disclosures
As a lot of people in my world know, there are a number of initiatives underway to try to improve disclosure by companies of information related to employment practices. This is in response to blow-ups at a number of companies that have had controversi…Read more…
Unite calls for tougher takeover laws as GKN bid gets government go-ahead
Unite calls for tougher takeover laws as GKN bid gets government go-ahead24 April 2018The whims of short-term speculators and hedge funds will ‘drive a coach and horses’ through the UK’s industrial strategy unless the government toughens up the UK’s ta…Read more…
ITF recommends shareholders vote against ICTSI directors
ITF recommends shareholders vote against ICTSI directorsThe International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF) today released a shareholder advisory note detailing governance issues at International Container Terminal Services Inc. (ICTSI). 15/03/2…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…
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…
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…
New guidelines for assessing company behaviour on labour issues
The Committee on Workers’ Capital (CWC) has just published an important new document – the CWC Guidelines for the Evaluation of Workers’ Human Rights and Labour Standards.
Its the product of a couple of years’ work by a global group of trade union exp…Read more…