28 November 2018 – Yesterday evening Euroshareholders, the shareholders branch of BETTER FINANCE, announced the winners of the 2018 Euroshareholders Awards at a ceremony in Wiesbaden, Germany. This year, the Euroshareholders’ “Shareholder-friendly” Award, awarded to a DAX 30 company with the most shareholder-friendly director’s pay system, went to Merck. The evaluation criteria for this award
Today, the European Commission has reported on the latest developments in risk reduction in the EU banking sector, as well as the progress towards an even more integrated and stable EU financial system. As outlined by the Commission, the risk reduction in the EU banking sector is continuing at a sustained pace, while financial stability
The world’s largest asset manager, BlackRock, has pitched into debate over US investor rights, backing tougher rules on shareholder advice and “greater transparency” in resolutions and annual meetings. According to Barbara Novick, BlackRock’s vice-chairman, and Ray Cameron, head of investment stewardship for the Americas, such improvements are possible through the proxy process, including around voting
Low-cost robo-adviser Nutmeg says to be the first UK wealth manager to provide environmental, social and governance (ESG) scores, calculated using data points from MSCI. Its chief investment officer, Shaun Port, has encouraged other providers to follow their example and become more transparent, rather than wait to be forced to do that by the regulations.
The Joint Committee of the European Supervisory Authorities launched a consultation on amendments to the Key Information Document for Packaged Retail and Insurance-based Investment Products (PRIIPs). Since January 1, 2018, the EU PRIIPs Regulation has required providers of PRIIPs to prepare and publish a stand-alone, standardized Key Information Document (KID) for their products. Even though
In the past year, indices measuring markets have ballooned to more than 3.7 m, as providers produce a large number of bond market, environment, social and governance benchmarks. The rising popularity of passive investing has influenced the designing of means to measure everything from performance of small companies, to the music streaming industry. According to
On 12 November the European Parliament’s Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee adopted a draft regulation limiting charges for cross-border payments within the EU and for currency conversion services by a broad cross-party majority. Such a regulation would mean that regardless of the currency, the same fees as for national payments within the EU will be
Solvency II equity-to-own funds calibrations to be reduced to 22% in some cases to support long-term investments. BETTER FINANCE’s (and others’) unabated efforts to convince the EU Authorities to recalibrate the capital requirements for equity have started to bear fruit. On 9 November 2018, with the input of BETTER FINANCE and other stakeholders, the Commission
On Friday 26 October the joint meeting of the World Federation of Investors (WFI) and World Federation of Young Investors (WFYI) at the Paris Stock EURONEXT marked the conclusion of the annual meeting of the WFI. This year the annual meeting coincided with the 50th anniversary of the French Federation of Individual Investors and Investor
Pension funds are supposed to focus on the long-term with a natural investment perspective stretching decades. From this perspective their policies should keep a keen eye on the future of the planet. Although this should be common sense, research conducted by Asset Owners Disclosure Project (AODP), managed by BETTER FINANCE’s UK member ShareAction, shows that 90% of the