Jella Benner-Heinacher, Chairman of ECGS and managing director of DSW (Deutsche Schutzvereinigung für Wertpapierebesitz) said “The Dutch consultant Shareholder Support, under the lead of Gerard Mertens, Professor at Erasmus University of Rotterdam, will enhance local expertise which is the value added of ECGS. The new partner will contribute to ensuring a high level service of proxy voting advice for institutional shareowners”.
After having served successfully for ten years, PIRC will hand over the function of ECGS Managing Partner on 1st October to Proxinvest, the French proxy research company based in Paris. Pierre-Henri Leroy, Chairman of Proxinvest, said "It is now acknowledged that self-regulation failed and that new measures should be taken to prevent a financial crisis from happening again. Investors need to be more cautious and institutions should be better equipped to avoid conflicts of interest that could put the value of their assets at risk. It is a real challenge for us to take over as Managing Partner from PIRC to continue providing the investor community with high quality services based on local expertise".
ECGS is a joint venture of independent local market experts providing institutional investors with corporate governance research and proxy voting advice on listed companies in Europe. www.ecgs.net
ECGS Partners :
* Ethos Services, www.ethosfund.ch
* DSW (Düsseldorf), www.dsw-info.de
* PIRC (Londres), www.pirc.co.uk
* Proxinvest (Paris), www.proxinvest.com
* and starting October 2010, Shareholder Support(Rotterdam), www.shareholdersupport.nl
Proxinvest (Paris)
Proxinvest, which was founded in 1995 in Paris by Pierre-Henri Leroy, is the first French advisory company for proxy voting and governance analysis of listed companies. In France, over thirty institutional investors and asset managers with more than 2,000 billion euros of assets under management rely on Proxinvest.
Committed to servicing investors only, Proxinvest provides its clients with voting recommendations for the general meetings of listed companies and customised voting guidelines based on criteria selected by each client. Its services are available via an on-line voting platform that also automatically generates voting forms and summary reports with due regard for the regulatory obligations related to the exercise of voting rights.
Proxinvest provides no ratings at the behest of issuers and no advisory services paid for by issuers. Its investor clients are thus assured of an impartial examination of the issues, an exacting position that allows Proxinvest to play a predominant role in financial governance developments.
Each year, after having consulted with investors in the autumn, Proxinvest updates and distributes its voting recommendations for the following year and presents them on the market. In the past ten years it has had a notable impact on voting results at general meetings and on the conduct of large corporations, in particular in terms of greater personal commitment by directors, more moderate remuneration for corporate management and control of dilution.
Proxinvest has a dozen staff members at its offices in Paris. It is a member of the European Corporate Governance Services (ECGS) and of the International Corporate Governance Network (ICGN).
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