Some reading material

Good article from John Plender on where shareholder engagement may go. The shareholder-as-owner model is not guaranteed to triumph.

And Financial Secretary to the Treasury Mark Hoban has been giving a number of speeches, which you can access here. Not a lot about governance in there so far, tho in this speech to the ABI in June he said the following:

as one of the most important groups of institutional investors in the UK, insurers also play a critical role in the oversight of the companies in which they are investors.

I therefore welcome the recent establishment of the Institutional Investor Council to help establish a stronger voice for institutional investors. A strong voice will be critical with the Financial Reporting Council creating the Stewardship Code for Institutional Investors to sit alongside the updated UK Corporate Governance Code.

I also look forward to the investigation that the Council is carrying out on fees paid in respect of rights issues, due to report by the end of the year. And I hope it will play an active role in responding to the recent Commission consultation on corporate governance in financial institutions.

Note the EC Green Paper rears its head again...