Our Corporate Governance Expert Group contributed to our response to the Shareholder Voting Working Group (SVWG) consultation on Shareholder Proxy Voting: Discussion Paper on Potential Progress in Transparency. We welcomed the work of the SVWG in identifying key barriers to trust and transparency and identifying some of the flaws in the current voting system. We generally agreed with the identified issues and proposed potential solutions.
We commented on particular aspects of the discussion paper while emphasising that small and mid-size quoted companies tend to have a different dynamic with their institutional investor than what may exist for larger FTSE 100 and FTSE 250 companies and their investors, which must be taken into consideration. We also mentioned that any proposals, particularly those introducing standardised processes, should take into consideration the limited resources of small and mid-size quoted companies and ensure that any changes do not increase costs.
