Wednesday 10 October 2012

Q3 voting data

M&G are the first asset manager I've seen who have put up voting data for the third quarter of 2012. A couple of interesting (ok, interesting to me) points stick out -

They voted for Darty's remuneration report. This being the company that had to issue an RNS because their previous reporting was deficient. The remuneration report was voted down at the company's AGM in September.

They didn't vote (or at least their reporting says 'no action') at the Sports Direct AGM where the proposed incentive scheme for Mike Ashley was defeated. There's a similar 'no action' report in their Q2 disclosure in respect of Capital Shopping Centres (which saw a pretty big vote against its rem report). I know some managers don't bother to vote where they have piddly holdings, maybe that's it?   

Actually I've spotted a few 'don't vote' disclosures in another manager's reporting, which I may explore further in another post.

2 comments:

ICTY Watch said...

Interesting. I have a question about non-institutional shareholders. Is it possible for them to gain voting rights over shares they hold in ISAs and pension plans? Most people own shares but they are often managed by other people. If more people managed them themselves maybe there would be more shareholder revolts.

Tom Powdrill said...

Currently I don't think it's possible to vote individual funds (ie an ISA).

In terms of pensions many final salary schemes don't let the asset managers vote and direct it themselves instead.

Defined contribution (money purchase) schemes haven't really got involved in this type of thing to date, although NEST (the new national scheme, which is DC) will be doing so.