An article from the FT on the ongoing opposition to the PRIIPs KID rules reiterates the industry’s growing concerns that the disclosure requirements on costs and charges for investment products generate the opposite result of that aimed by the Regulation. Alongside voices on the professional side, Guillaume Prache – Managing Director at BETTER FINANCE –
The European Court of Justice, in Luxembourg, has just ruled in favor of investors who faced expropriation during the nationalization of six Slovenian banks in 2013. BETTER FINANCE and the PanSlovenian Investors` & Shareholders` Association (VZMD), the organization that has been fighting on behalf of the investors for the past 30 months, see this decision
“It is time for regulators to investigate sales practices at banks”, says Madison Marriage, Journalist for the FT. According to Cerulli, a research company, 90 per cent of the money that entered Europe’s fund industry between 2009 and 2013 went to independent asset managers. This figure raises the disconcerting question of whether the “open architecture”
Earlier this week BETTER FINANCE wrote to MEP Brian Hayes, ECON Rapporteur for the Revision of the IORP Directive, expressing its concerns regarding the proposed amendments in the ECON Committee draft report on the IORP Directive that would constitute a very significant setback in the protection of EU savers, watering down the information that IORP
Seven years into the financial crisis and the question remains: are investors better protected today than they were in 2008? The European Federation of Investors and Financial Services Users is particularly well placed to answer this question and provides a mixed view on the issue. With a team of five, Better Finance fights an uphill battle to be heard amongst industry heavyweights such as the European Banking Federation. Guillaume
"Barriers to Shareholder Engagement – A report on cross-border voting" was mentioned in a Spanish article in El Pais. The article focus on shareholders’ participation in companies in Spain and the barriers investors have to face which continue to make cross-border voting a challenge: "Costs, logistics or different requirements and national standards make it particularly difficult for individual shareholders
In an interview with Europolitics, Guillaume Prache urged European politicians and policy makers to act and make the long-term financing of the economy their real priority. BETTER FINANCE’s Managing Director believes the reforms put in place after the financial crisis focused too much on “financial stability” in order to avoid the bankruptcy of major financial institutions and did far too little to protect investors and financial services’ users.
Guillaume Prache – Managing Director of EuroFinUse – was interviewed for an article in the Dutch pensions and investor news magazine (Nederlands Pensioen en Beleggingsnieuws) on the disproportionate influence of the industry lobby groups compared to the underrepresentation of the user side of financial products. Mr Prache stressed the fact that the European Parliament adopted
Another article citing BETTER FINANCE’s work was published earlier this week by the Financial Times, reporting on the poor returns of pension funds in the E.U. Under the headline ‘Should the wealthy be worried about the pension penury ahead?’, Jeremy Woolfe quotes the Pension Savings Report: The Real Return (2017) in a piece looking into
On Tuesday, June 28th, the President of the PanSlovenian Investors’ & Shareholders’ Association, Kristjan Verbič, spoke at a rally to support workers and minority shareholders in their protest of the Slovenian Sovereign Holdings (SSH), a majority shareholder of the Port of Koper (Luka Koper), changing the company’s supervisory board. The Port of Koper, is one