Individual investors never agreed with the dismantling of Fortis and are now asking for compensation. The francophone court of Brussels will handle the case with more than 5 billion euro at stake. The issues under investigation are the dismantling of Fortis and the sale of a part of the former bank. More than 1000 shareholders
Today BETTER FINANCE launched the third edition of its annual examination of the returns on pension savings in the EU at a press conference at the Brussels Press Club. According to the 2014 European Commission’s consumer scoreboard, the market for investment and pension products continues to be the worst performing market in Europe. As the new
BETTER FINANCE publishes its response to the ESAs Joint Consultation on in Key Information Documents for Packaged Retail and Insurance-based Investment Products (PRIIPs). The strong need for simple and short pre-contractual information on objective costs and charges as well as historical real returns that enables retail investors to reach well-informed investment decisions cannot be emphasised enough.
A new study from London’s Cass Business School found that smaller hedge funds perform better during times of crisis. The analysis of the performance of 7261 hedge funds from 1994 to 2014 shows that a hedge fund with with £200m of assets would on average outperform a £5bn hedge fund by 125 basis points a year. The research,
Carl Rosén, chief executive of the Swedish Shareholders’ Association (SSA) and vice-president of BETTER FINANCE, featured in last Sunday’s Financial Times “Face to Face” section, dedicated to people in the fund management industry. A former investment banker, Carl Rosén and the Swedish organisation caught the financial industry and media’s attention after publicly criticising some of
On 7 May 2015, the Legal Affairs Committee (JURI) of the European Parliament voted to overhaul corporate governance rules covering compensation package and voting practices by large shareholders. The proposal, first introduced in April of last year, was designed to promote long-term investing but the committee’s split vote foreshadows resistance from MEPs from some countries delegations. The
Larry Fink, chairman and chief executive officer of BlackRock, the American multinational investment management corporation and one of the largest money-management firms in the world, is not the most likely person to jump to mind as a supporter of BETTER FINANCE’s struggle for better cooperate governance and shareholder engagement. Yet, on the 14th of
Foreign exchange (FX) is the world’s largest, most liquid and active marketplace that surprisingly lacks for the attention its size merits. As to its significance, one day of FX trading beats average daily trading in global stock markets by 28 to 1. According to the report “Navigating the waters of foreign exchange and international
The European Commission will release a green paper on Capital Markets Union next week, on Wednesday 18th February 2015. Let us briefly summarize what has been said about the initiative so far. As the title of his job – Commissioner for Financial Stability, Financial Services and Capital Markets Union – suggests, the Capital Markets Union (CMU)
Jean Berthon, President of both FAIDER and Better Finance, and Klaus Struwe of the Danish Shareholders Association were appointed as members of EIOPA’s consultative expert group who will advise and provide technical input to the Joint Committee’s Sub-group on Key Information Documents for Packaged Retail and Insurance-based Investment Products (PRIIPs), for a mandate of one