Make voting great again: Boards must up the ante to win over apathetic shareholders
Easier access and more engagement crucial
Holly Mackay
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Holly Mackay of Boring Money
Voting and retail shareholder rights have become something of a hot topic. If you listen to pockets of the industry, this is something the end consumer desperately wants, needs and deserves. Investor rights are being denied, trampled and ignored. This is outrageous and something must be done.
Except there is a problem. Out here on the consumer coalface, that is not what I hear. At all. At least not yet.
There are two types of individual or groups promoting this idea. One is platforms seeking competitive advantage alongside a doubtless noble motivation to get consumers engaged and interested and empowered.
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In PROD we trust: Why it s not too late for firms to act on new product governance regime
Understanding of rules is low, but time is of the essence
Maurice McDonald
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Maurice McDonald of Bovill
In February, the Financial Conduct Authority published a report concluding there was significant scope for asset managers to improve their product governance arrangements.
Having examined how a sample of asset management firms, as product providers (manufacturers), took into account the product governance rules in its
Product Intervention and Product Governance sourcebook (
PROD), the report found that several asset managers were not fully complying with the regime.
Safe in our asset management bubble, it would be easy to remain aloof to the seismic shifts we have seen in finance, be it Reddit uprisings or the soaring prices of Bitcoin.
As we head into our second year of the Assessment of Value process, indications post-year one are not promising. Survey results suggest adviser engagement is very low.
In a world where the FCA hopes that end investors engage, not even their advisers are reading reports.
We may have achieved the letter of what the FCA asked for, but not the spirit.
An undiscovered country?
Putting that vanilla blancmange aside, imagine assessing the value of the complex world of cryptocurrency and tokenisation. How would we even start?
See Japan in a different light: How investors get ESG in world s third-largest economy wrong
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Give the country due credit for green efforts
Richard Kaye of Comgest
Greenwashing is a persistent and growing problem in the ESG landscape. However, many companies in Japan suffer from this issue in reverse and we believe their ESG ratings are often significantly worse than they deserve.