Corporate governance - Vigil

This study examines whether exposure to an insider trading enforcement action deters corporate insiders’ future opportunistic trading. A priori, the answer is not clear. While it is illegal for insiders to trade based on material private information, this can be difficult to establish in court. Further, many insiders continue to earn large profits from their trades, which raises questions about the effectiveness of existing regulations.

On Monday, August 9th, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued its Sixth Assessment Report (AR6). Released against a backdrop of wildfires in California, Greece, and Turkey, floods in Germany, Belgium, and China, and record heat in Canada and Siberia, the report states unequivocally that “human influence has warmed the climate at a rate that is unprecedented in at least the last 2000 years,” and that “global warming of 1.5°C and 2°C will be exceeded during the 21st century unless deep reductions in CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions occur in the coming decades.”

Environmental, social and governance funds do little to drive change, largely because they rely on ESG rankings and other data that set the bar for good corporate citizenship “abysmally low”, research suggests.

Fewer investors see hurdles to fully embracing ESG integration, according to HSBC study
A growing number of institutional investors now have a company-wide policy on ESG investment, with the largest firms leading the way, according to new research.

"Governance" focuses on the organization and behavior of an economic entity. Issues like board structure, diversity, corporate risk management, auditing and compliance, information disclosure, and ethical business practices are just some of the concerns that can impact investor confidence. At the heart of this set of issues is assessing the accountability and transparency of policies and practices. Typically, these issues gain media attention and eventually effect change in the organization.

A corporate governance issue that has drawn broad attention is the under­representation of females on corporate boards. Many attempts to address this issue follow a rules-based approach, in which mandated quotas for female representation in boards are imposed. An alternative to a prescriptive regulatory approach is a principles-based one, under which firms publicly disclose their compliance with suggested “best practice” guidelines, and, if their practices depart from the guidelines, firms must explain the reasons for their non-compliance.

The pound sank to its lowest point in eight months on Tuesday as investors worried that the fuel crisis sweeping the UK could lead to a sharp slowdown in growth at the same time as a surge in inflation.

Canada’s housing agency has warned that the country’s real estate market is overheated, overvalued and at at risk of a downturn, as home prices continue to climb in most of Ontario, Montreal and Atlantic Canada.

In its latest housing market assessment released Tuesday, Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. identified excessive home price acceleration as a problem and issued its highest risk rating for the country.

Ford expects to spend $7 billion on the project—the largest manufacturing investment in its history—and collaborate with South Korean battery maker SK Innovation to construct the battery facilities.

“To me, i say the cost of a human life is priceless, period,” said Andrew Cuomo, the governor of New York state. As they tried to slow the spread of covid-19 in the spring of 2020, politicians took actions that were unprecedented in their scale and scope. The dire warnings of the deaths to come if nothing was done, and the sight of overflowing Italian hospitals, were unfamiliar and terrifying. Before the crisis the notion of halting people’s day-to-day activity seemed so economically and politically costly as to be implausible. But once China and Italy imposed lockdowns, they became unavoidable elsewhere.

The National Pension Service, the world’s third-largest pension fund which is based in South Korea, has stressed its unwavering stance in the adoption of environmental, social and governance factors across its investments.

Kim Yong-jin, chairman and chief executive officer of the NPS, pledged to motivate companies it has invested in and external partners, to which NPS deploys capital, to adapt to NPS’ responsible investing strategies.

As the world continues its recovery from the ravages of coronavirus (COVID-19), directors & officers (D&Os) find themselves amid an increasingly volatile risk landscape. While ‘traditional’ risks, including securities claims and regulatory scrutiny, remain, others, such as cyber security threats and environmental, social and governance (ESG) pressures have emerged as key priorities from a D&O perspective. As companies face evolving risks and concerns in a ‘new normal’, the challenges facing D&Os appear set to escalate.

A major challenge for investors is maintaining proper governance of their Chinese foreign entity to generate a profitable business. Whilst there are significant improvements in the business environment, including regulatory reforms to streamline administrative procedures, investors, especially those residing abroad, face challenges in establishing the proper corporate governance to ensure the Chinese subsidiary correcting operating. Usually, the geographic and cultural distances between the shareholders and the Chinese subsidiary could generate miscommunication and misunderstanding, and without the proper corporate governance established, the Chinese subsidiary could face losses and damages.

Europe’s banks have dramatically closed the gap on reaching new global capital standards that come fully into force in 2028, after pandemic restrictions on dividend payouts boosted balance sheets last year despite a choppy economy.

TCI Fund Management Ltd., which is seeking changes at Canadian National Railway Co., is accusing the railway of not disclosing the resignation of Julie Godin from CN’s board of directors in an appropriate and timely manner.

Europeans are leaving their houses to go shopping, eat out, travel and visit cinemas as much as they did before the pandemic in a sign of returning consumer confidence across the eurozone.

Data on economic activity in September suggest that European consumers feel emboldened by high Covid-19 vaccination rates, despite a slew of worrying economic news including higher energy bills, supply-chain disruptions and worries about the impact of an economic slowdown in China.

BP said nearly a third of its British petrol stations had run out of the two main grades of fuel on Sunday as panic buying forced the government to suspend competition laws and allow firms to work together to ease shortages

On september 20th the Bank for International Settlements (bis), the central banks’ central bank, released data showing that corporate borrowing around the world remains at an all-time high. A notable case is in China, where there is even more business borrowing as a share of gdp than in Japan at the peak of its bubble-related borrowing spree in the 1990s. But it is high everywhere (see chart). Corporate debt in the rich world stood at 102% of gdp at the end of March, compared with 92% before the outbreak of the covid-19 pandemic. Could high levels of debt threaten the recovery in advanced economies?

Trust in an organization is an ongoing relationship between an entity and its various stakeholders—and is earned through that entity’s actions. Those actions, however, cannot be strictly embodied in a crisis response strategy to address a trust breach. Instead, by investing in trust proactively, organizations can build “trust equity”—a reserve of trust that can not only improve performance and generate value on an ongoing basis, but also allow the organization to be more resilient when a crisis inevitably hits. Managing these trust-based relationships starts at the very top and requires the focus and attention of the C-suite.

Agnico Eagle Mines Ltd. is buying Kirkland Lake Gold Ltd. in an all-stock deal worth about $13-billion, that will see existing Agnico’s long-serving chief executive Sean Boyd move to executive chair, with Kirkland’s top executive Tony Makuch becoming the CEO of the merged entity.

Morgan Stanley’s top female executive in Asia, Wei Sun Christianson, will retire from the bank at the end of this year after working at the Wall Street firm for nearly two decades.

This investment methodology, once considered novel, has moved into the mainstream. Institutional investors in particular have been vocal in expressing their belief that maximizing returns to shareholders can no longer be a corporation’s only goal, and are increasingly focused on evaluating company performance against ESG key performance indicators in order to determine the sustainability and future financial performance of issuers. Securities regulators are also following this trend and are beginning to implement disclosure requirements for issuers based on ESG factors and aimed at increasing transparency into ESG performance for investors.

The one-hour crunch meeting on October 7 will be spearheaded by the pharma giant's chairman Jonathan Symonds and senior independent director Vindi Banga, who is also a senior partner at Clayton, Dubilier & Rice, the private equity firm bidding for Morrisons.