Succession planning is a critical function of boards. It ensures that they have the right people in place to lead the company strategy and objectives into the future. It is an essential function of good corporate governance, ensuring that the boards have the right mix of skills, experience, and diversity to effectively direct the company…

March 17, 2023 Read more >

The Wates Corporate Governance Principles aimed at large private companies, provide a corporate governance framework and an opportunity for all private companies to develop their approach to corporate governance and best practice in the interests of the long-term success of the business. One of the six Wates principles is ‘Board composition’, which states that to…

February 24, 2023 Read more >

In November 2022, the Financial Reporting Council (“FRC”) published its annual review of Corporate Governance Code (“the Code”) disclosures.  As previously, it selected a range of 100 companies across the FTSE 350 and Small Cap markets. Whilst much of the findings will only be interesting to fully listed businesses, there are still some important points…

January 26, 2023 Read more >

Listed companies are required to put their directors’ remuneration policy to a shareholder resolution at least every three years. If a company wishes to make any changes to its remuneration policy, it must put the new policy to shareholders for approval at an annual general meeting (AGM). Several listed companies are likely to be seeking…

January 26, 2023 Read more >

Corporate governance can seem like a daunting task for any organization to undertake. Some organizations do it because they fall within specific codes, others consider doing it, but the thought and the process overwhelms them to a point of choosing to do the bare minimum, or nothing at all. It is important for companies to…

November 22, 2022 Read more >

The FRC (soon to become ARGA) is about to review the provisions of the UK Corporate Governance Code, which is applicable to companies having a premium listing on the London Stock Exchange. An informal consultation process, which will include organisations like the QCA, is scheduled to commence at the end of this month. This will…

October 12, 2022 Read more >

ESG is a growing characteristic of executive remuneration plans, with 58% of FTSE 100 companies including these metrics in their reward packages – up from 45% in 2020. According to a 2021 PwC Survey amongst Corporate Directors, 94% support the inclusion of non-financial targets in executive compensation plans. But aside from this, why should companies…

September 15, 2022 Read more >

Recently, the FT reported on investor concerns about Government proposals to review current rules on paying NEDs in shares or share options. The Government wants to see if they impose any unnecessary restrictions on NEDs becoming fully invested in the future success of the companies of which they are directors. This raises questions about the…

July 19, 2022 Read more >

On 31 May, following a long consultation process, the Government published its responses to proposals intended to restore trust in audit and corporate governance. The Government’s responses significantly dilute many of the initial proposals for reform, a move which is likely to provide some welcome relief to the boards of smaller listed and AIM companies…

June 29, 2022 Read more >

The term ESG, first coined in 2005 stands for Environment, Social and Governance. In the years since, the noise around ESG has grown louder and we are now seeing companies implementing these metrics into their strategy and incentive plans. We found in our recent GECN ESG research ‘2022 and Beyond: Global Trends in the use…

March 16, 2022 Read more >

Last month, the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (BEIS) published its non-binding guidance on ‘Mandatory climate-related financial disclosures by publicly quoted companies, large private companies and LLPs. The purpose of the document is to assist companies and LLPs to understand how to meet the new mandatory climate related financial disclosure requirements under the…

March 16, 2022 Read more >

Given that the UK was one of the first countries to really try to get to grips with the issues of Corporate Governance in the 1990’s (via the Cadbury Code), and that there has been continued development of best practice in this area through various bodies such as the FRC, IA and QCA since then,…

March 16, 2022 Read more >