Among many excellent ideas for the future presented by distinguished speakers and panelists the advice from the Mc.Kinsey New York top strategist insisting on the priority for a strong cash position but also for keeping investing in once core business were heard.
The debate over the representation of women and diversity at the board of Director offered an opportunity to realize that the Norwegian quota rule resulted in an improvement of the Directors participation but also of the overall seriousness of the selection process for Norwegian boards, and an accelerated rotation of CEOs… an unexpected very positive side-effect. Last not least, also according to Prof. Daniel Ferreira of the London School of Economics, Boards with three women as directors had superior general financial performance and even 66% had superior ROE ratios.
The debate over financial markets offered a mixed impression as the CEO of the Canadian exchange company TMX, Tom Kloet, described the ETF or « trackers » as "the greatest financial innovation of the century…” ( we would have expected something else if only because the trackers underlining shares are generally silent shares and are never voted…) : Mr. Kloet did not integrate that many so called innovations such as tax heavens related funds and others are precisely cost competitive because they are “free riders”….
ETFs benedit here from unfair competition features similar to the one benefiting to the MTS private securities exchanges and other dark pools competing with TMX and other organized securities exchanges such as TMX….Accordingly the conference attendant expressed a majority opinion for a compulsory voting of the ETF’s underlying shares.
While 63% of these thought that the governance improvement and more independent directors had no net effect over the crisis prevention of the crisis, the discussion over the Directors remuneration indicated that the community of equity investors were not in majority supportive of the recent anti-Say on Pay resolution” attitude of both the Nowegian sovereign fund and of Ontario Teachers pension fund (cf. News above).
Finally the ECGS AGM confirmed its mandate to its Chair Christie Wood and its new Managing Director Carl Rosen and expressed a special support for the Securities and Exchange Commission new “proxy access” rules. If adopted, the proposed rules would allow stockholders meeting specified eligibility criteria to require a public company to include the stockholders’ nominees for election in the company’s proxy statement and proxy card, while allowing for more open external proposals at listed US companies AGM.
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