Tuesday, 5 April 2011

Can the IIC make it to a year without naming its members?

Just a reminder, it was May last year that the formation of the Institutional Investor Council was announced. After widespread criticism of the Institutional Shareholders Committee, the IIC was supposed to really give the institutional investor community in the UK proper representation. An ISC press release last year promised a constitution and nominations committee, and an update on progress by... ahem... August. Seven months later as far as I can see there has been no public report from the ISC at all.

The IIC's objectives were to be -
to work closely with the Financial Reporting Council in promoting the new Stewardship Code for shareholders; to facilitate collective engagement by institutional investors with companies particularly in times of stress; and to provide industry-wide senior practitioner input to the authorities on issues relating to investments.

Has anyone seen the IIC doing any of this? I've seen no promotion of the Code by the IIC as the IIC. And as for input to the authorities, no delegation to BIS, the most relevant department these days, it seems.

Rumour has is that the trade bodies that make up the existing ISC have been unable to get it together. But it's getting a bit silly now. Are we really going to make it to a year since the launch announcement without any news about who is on/in the IIC? If so it may be reasonable to ask whether even rearranging the deckchairs is beyond the investor community.

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