I. Revision of the Shareholder Rights Directive as regards the encouragement of long-term shareholder engagement
Insufficient engagement of institutional investors and asset managers
Insufficient link between pay and performance of directors
Lack of shareholder oversight on related party transactions
Inadequate transparency of proxy advisors
Difficult and costly exercise of rights flowing from securities for investors
Corporate governance is the system of rules, practices and processes by which a company is directed and controlled. Good corporate governance ensures that companies and their management operate within a framework of checks and balances so they are accountable both to their owners and to society at large. Good corporate governance ensures the company's management makes decisions in the best interests of the company and thus significantly contributes to companies' competitiveness and long term sustainability and therefore to economic growth and jobs. Evidence1 suggests that well-governed companies perform better and are more successful in the long run.
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VIPsight - July 2014Companies
Probable claims for Rhön-Klinikum
The Rhön-Klinikum general shareholders' meeting, substantially hostage to the dissatisfaction of a group of small shareholders, voted en bloc (99.35%) to buy back shares worth 1.7 thousand million Euros. This is the approach that Rhön intends adopting to distribute most of the revenue deriving from the sale of 40 clinics -worth 3 thousand million Euros overall - to Fresenius. more
The German Mittelstand
German Mittelstand needs more company founders
In the public perception, German Mittelstand consists of two categories mid- to large-size companies, and large ones. This is an overly restrictive definition, however. The Institute for Mittelstandsforschung in Bonn has announced that the fundamental requirements for belonging to the category of Mittelstand are an overlap of ownership and management, and company independence. This makes all manufacturers of traditional arts and crafts, family-run businesses, the professions and the many companies in start-up mode all Mittelstand companies .more
Buhlmann's Corner
Shareholders' meetings from Munich to Madrid by way of Hanover
They say that that increasing attendance at shareholders' meetings has been successful.
In all honesty, though, this is only one of the ways of seeing reality. After the cold shower of legality from the outside, things have merely reverted to how they had been beforehand. True, judgment has been passed, but who's reading it? The bulk of dispersed votes has been recovered this year. The single unadorned facts were collected by our sponsor and can be seen on our website VIPsight.eu .
People
The Supervisory Board of Bayer has appointed Werner Baumann to the board of directors from October 1, with responsibility for Portfolio Strategy and Management. Johannes Dietsch will join the board of directors on September 1 as CFO, the position which up to now had been Baumann's. These appointments are instrumental for enabling current chairman of the board of directors Martin Dikkens to extend his mandate by two years only when it reaches its natural 5-year expiry date. more
Campus
There are a number of regulatory instruments that the Government Commission on the Code of Corporate Governance would do well to repeal
In the course of the 13th Conference of the Deutscher Corporate Governance Kodex in Berlin, President Manfred Gentz announced that in future the group of experts would dwell less on developing new recommendations but increasingly focus on analysis and comment of new regulatory initiatives put forward by third parties. more