The financial crisis of 2008 revealed significant deficiencies in corporate governance, partly due to insufficient shareholder engagement. To this day individual investors continue to face many obstacles in exercising their voting rights and actively engage in the governance of the companies they invest in, especially cross-border. Currently a significant part of transferable shares in companies
Funds Europe reported that financial services markets are expected to generate higher returns in the forthcoming year, according to ‘[a]lmost half (48%) of UK financial advisers’. The financial forecast is based on the Advisers Attitude Report 2017 of Aegon, a company that provides life insurances, pension savings and asset management. However, the optimistic forecast is
For the first time a major asset manager will make performance fees that take investors’ interests into account and don’t just benefit providers. Fidelity announced that it will lower the basic charges applying to its fund range whilst at the same time introducing a performance fee linked to out-performance vis-à-vis the wider market. This fee
The report by Corporate Europe Observatory (CE) on the external advisory groups to the European Central Bank (ECB) concludes that a very large proportion of its counselling on monetary policy comes from ‘representatives of some of the most influential global financial corporations’. The news item published today by CE summarizes its report findings, drawing the
I&P Europe reported today that the U.K. Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) will launch a new consultation with the British stakeholders concerning the main elements of the code of conduct it envisages for asset managers in the investment sector. The first report of the FCA, launched in 2015 (Asset Management Market Study), puts forward three main
Following the adoption of the Insurance Distribution Directive (IDD) [1], which was meant to improve the ‘protection of consumers and retail investors buying insurance products or insurance-based investment product’ [2] by ‘increasing transparency of price and costs of insurance products’ [3], by disclosing information on inducements and streamlining investment-related advice, the European Commission (EC) adopted
World Investor Week (WIW) is a week-long, global campaign promoted by IOSCO to raise awareness about the importance of investor education and protection and highlight the various initiatives of securities regulators in these two critical areas. From 2-8 October 2017, IOSCO securities regulators and other IOSCO members on six continents will provide a range of
Fully in line with BETTER FINANCE’s 2017 Briefing Paper on mis-selling of financial products as well as its study into the issue of Closet Indexing at the beginning of the year, the European Parliament’s ECON committee is now commissioning a study into the mis-selling of financial products to European individual investors, looking at how and
In spite of the June 2016 UK referendum to leave the EU, British professional associations continue to show support for the Community method and for deeper economic integration. In the context of financial services, following the IRSG proposal to the British Government for the mutual access to financial markets part of the future EU-UK FTA,
“Whistle-blowing“ is one of the most important tools to fight singular or structural breaches of law in EU Member States.[1] According to the European Commission, whistle-blowing is a form of reporting or disclosing acts or omissions that ‘represent a threat or harm to the public interest (such as fraud, corruption, tax evasion, threats to public