Corporate governance - Vigil

The board’s role as the catalyst for long-term shareholder value includes keeping management focused and goal oriented.

There are 10 gender "impact zones" that need to be addressed in order to accelerate progress toward gender parity, write Kweilin Ellingrud, Mekala Krishnan, and Anu Madgavkar in Global Daily.

Institutional Shareholder Services Inc. (ISS), a leading provider of governance and responsible investment solutions to the global financial community, today [November 8, 2016] announced changes to the methodology underlying its pay-for-performance models for companies in the U.S., Canada, and Europe to take effect Feb. 1, 2017.

The asset management industry has witnessed a tremendous growth in exchange-traded funds (ETFs). As a result, roughly 30% of U.S. equity trading volume is attributable to ETFs (Boroujerdi and Fogertey, 2015). [1] Regulators and academics have found evidence that ETFs have distorted the capital markets as a whole, leading to increased volatility, co-movement, and systemic risk, as well as affecting real managerial decisions (see Wurgler (2010) for a review).

Activist investors are going after smaller targets this year. Activists this year through October have launched just 14 campaigns at companies worth more than $10 billion, down from 26 over the same period last year, according to data tracker FactSet.

In recent years, when pursuing corporations and their officers for violations of the U.S. securities laws, the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) Division of Enforcement has increasingly brought its claims to the SEC’s in-house administrative law judges (ALJs) rather than the federal civil courts. In fact, last year, over 90% of the SEC’s actions against public companies were brought to the SEC’s ALJs—whereas five years ago, only 33% of those cases were brought as ALJ proceedings. The credit for this remarkable increase in ALJ proceedings belongs in large part to the 2010 Dodd–Frank Act, [1] which expanded the ALJs’ jurisdiction and authorized new penalties that ALJs could impose, making it unnecessary for the SEC to bring many claims in civil courts.

Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Mary Jo White, after nearly four years as the agency’s head, today announced that she intends to leave at the end of the Obama Administration.

Another quarterly earnings cycle is just about to start with companies putting the final touches on their Q3 2016 earnings releases, analyst presentations and the messages they will share with investors. There is intense pressure on companies to meet quarterly analyst estimates and there is also extra attention from the Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) on how companies report and present their financial information.

The world in which boards of directors operate has been fundamentally transformed in in recent years. There is increased operational complexity, rapidly changing technology, global political instability, the proliferation of cyber-threats, vocal demands from shareholders and stakeholders, new regulatory requirements, and greater levels of media visibility and public scrutiny.

Countries that have them tend to like them.

US SIF Foundation Releases 2016 Biennial Report on UA Sustainable, Responsible and Impact Investing Trends - Demand due to risk & climate change