Good corporate governance, like any relationship, is a two-way street. After years of focus on company behaviour, the credit crisis has led regulators to turn the spotlight back to investors as stewards of the companies in which they invest.
Lord Myners, who reviewed the UK pension fund industry in 2001, has been outspoken on the subject of “ownerless corporations”, criticising shareholders for behaving like gamblers and “absentee landlords”, while Sir David Walker, whose review of UK banks’ corporate governance was published last November, laid a share of the blame for the collapse of the banking system on their shareholders for not holding them to account.
Sarah Wilson, chief executive of proxy voting agency Manifest, said: “A disproportionate amount of corporate governance reform has focused on companies rather than investors. There’s now a definite trend towards joined-up thinking between corporate governance and investment decisions, which is long overdue.”
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