Reflecting the materiality of corruption and risk to shareholders, and to mark International Anti-Corruption Day, (Monday, 9 Dec 2019) Minerva is announcing the inclusion of a new anti-corruption metric in its pre-AGM research reports. Alongside indicators for climate change, cyber-security and tax governance, the new corruption indicator and voting guidelines will help investors take an…
New Paper: Asset Management, Index Funds, and Theories of Corporate Control
Matthew J. Mallow’s new paper on index funds: This paper seeks to ground the debate around asset managers, index funds and corporate control firmly in the practical context of the operation and regulation of asset managers. Acting on be- half of clients, asset managers are incentivized to monitor companies for long-term performance. As minority shareholders,…
Is The SEC Proxy Proposal Analyst Retaliation? | Nasdaq
The intended consequences of this are stated as clarity and truthfulness of proxy recommendations. We feel the unintended effects of this are far more serious. First, this process of preclearing analysis and recommendations would be a clear violation of long-standing professional standards of analyst independence set nearly two decades ago. The specific point was to…
Larker and Tayan Re-Discover the Governance Wheel
Stanford’s David F. Larcker and Brian Tayan have a new paper called Loosey-Goosey Governance: Four Misunderstood Terms in Corporate Governance in which they appear to think they’ve discovered what everyone has understood forever — that there are limits to structural solutions and that checklists of best practices are not especially helpful. We were very clear…
Shareholders Urge JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo to Act on Climate
A coalition of investors — Walden Asset Management, Presbyterian Church USA, and First Affirmative Financial Network — led by shareholder advocate As You Sow recently filed climate-focused resolutions with a large segment of the U.S. banking industry, including JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley. Investor concern is growing regarding…
Nuns berate SEC over planned shareholder rules | Financial Times
Two groups of nuns, including one that puts living a life of peacemaking at the centre of its work, are gearing up for a fight with the US financial regulator over proposed shareholder rules. The Ursuline Convent of the Sacred Heart in Toledo and the Dominican Sisters of Peace based in Columbus, Ohio, want…
Asia-Pacific investors more open to ESG investing | The Asset ESG Forum – Environmental, Social & Governance
ESG consideration is gaining more acceptance from investors across the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region, according to the APAC results released by Franklin Templeton of a comprehensive global study on ESG adoption, implementation and development across institutional and wholesale asset owners globally. The study was conducted by NMG Consulting. ESG considerations gain acceptance Results show investor predisposition…
How Corporate Lawbreakers Get a Leg Up at the Justice Department
The Project On Government Oversight (POGO) revealed in August that top political appointees at the Justice Department’s headquarters in Washington, DC, overruled career federal prosecutors who sought to bring a felony charge against biotech giant Monsanto for illegally spraying a highly toxic pesticide in Hawaii. This happened after attorneys for Monsanto, including a former head…
Performance Metrics: Accelerating the Stakeholder Model
When the Business Roundtable announced their “new” commitment to “stakeholders,” we said it was not meaningful unless we saw incentive compensation aligned to specific stakeholder goals. At the Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, Equilar research analyst Connor Doyle looks at current incentive plans tied to goals other than the traditional…
Corporate debt nears a record $10 trillion, and borrowing binge poses new risks – The Washington Post
Little more than a decade after consumers binged on inexpensive mortgages that helped bring on a global financial crisis, a new debt surge — this time by major corporations — threatens to unleash fresh turmoil. A decade of historically low interest rates has allowed companies to sell record amounts of bonds to investors, sending total…
