Laurie Havelock
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Nominations are now open for the Corporate Governance Awards 2025
Submit your entries before July 25 to be considered Nominations for this year’s Corporate Governance Awards, brought to you by Governance Intelligence, are now open for submissions. On Thursday, November 6, 2025 hundreds of industry professionals from the governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) community will come together to honor the outstanding achievements that are shaping the future of the industry at the Oscars of Corporate Governance. The Corporate Governance Awards 2025 will recognize the best and the brightest in the GRC world, honoring those who set new standards of excellence, integrity and innovation. They cover many areas of governance-related activity,…
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How to engage the next generation of investors
Concise content, capturing imagination and e-snowmobiles: attracting the interest of a younger audience In a bid to keep up with the investing youth, many publicly listed companies are shifting their outreach and marketing efforts to meet the preferences of their various stakeholder audiences. This much is not new to most IR teams, who have been looking into video, social media and other online formats to connect with the next generation of stakeholders, in particular ‘gen Z’ (those born between 1997 and 2012). Making the most of these channels was the focus of a recent Governance Intelligence sister site IR Impact…
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A pared-back CSRD might sound good, but ESG-minded investors won’t be happy
Suggestions that EU legislation may be watered down in upcoming Omnibus package So much for double materiality. Rumors have been swirling around ESG-focused news outlets that the European Commission is expected to ‘heavily water down’ the requirements of its landmark CSRD and Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) legislations in its upcoming Omnibus package. Reported changes to CSRD could include making companies with less than 1,000 employees exempt from having to report under the regulation, estimated to mean that around 85 percent of firms covered by the directive would no longer be in scope. Other aspects at risk include the…
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‘I’m really excited about more global harmonization of disclosures and standards’: What to look out for at the Corporate Reporting Forum
Carrie Christopher speaks ahead of the upcoming event in New York hosted by Governance Intelligence and IR Magazine Air Products and Chemicals, an industrial gases company with a market capitalization of more than $70 bn, has asked the SEC for the green light to exclude from its next proxy statement a shareholder proposal seeking information about its lobbying. The proponent, John Chevedden, has filed a resolution asking that Air Products produce a report each year disclosing: ‘[Its] policy and procedures governing lobbying, both direct and indirect, and grassroots lobbying communications ‘[Its] payments used for (a) direct or indirect lobbying or…
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Not content with dominating the news, AI heads for shareholder proposals
New analysis shows institutional shareholders are concerned about the risks it poses It’s barely news to our readers that AI continues to have a widespread impact on the capital markets, not only the wider world. But new data shows that rather than enabling new efficiencies, the technology may be posing a crisis for some investors and the companies they hold. According to figures compiled by FTI Consulting, the number of shareholder proposals that directly addressed AI in the US more than doubled from 2023 to 2024. The scope and ambition of those proposals have also grown. And when we delve…
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Will a new face in the presidential election race change the prevailing mood on ESG?
Companies have abandoned sustainability initiatives but the tide could turn It was former British prime minister Harold Wilson who coined the phrase ‘a week is a long time in politics’. The past seven days have certainly proved that to be true. But the impact of whoever wins the race for the White House later this year will certainly be felt in the capital markets for decades to come. Indeed, the ongoing repercussions of Donald Trump’s first term as US president are still reverberating through listed companies. Earlier this week, the Financial Times ran a story claiming that US firms are…
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The week in GRC: Activist campaigns reach record levels and shareholder support for social and environmental proposals continues decline
This week’s governance, compliance and risk-management stories from around the web Investors’ ESG and anti-ESG proposals at AGMs have broken records so far in 2024, increasing by 5.2 percent on 2023’s numbers. Anti-ESG proposals drive the overall new trend, rising by 19 percent from 94 in 2023 to 113 in 2024 and marking a notable 90 percent increase on 2022. This is according to preliminary data from Georgeson’s early proxy season 2024 review, based on available annual meeting results gathered from July 2023 through May 2024. Within the anti-ESG segment, social-related proposals represent the majority (71 percent) of anti-ESG proposals…
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Going backward or going mainstream? How investors’ ESG expectations are changing
Governance Intelligence sister publication IR Magazine speaks to Schroders’ Marina Severinovsky ahead of the ESG Integration Forum – Summer Investors’ expectations around ESG factors have always been multifaceted. And with regulations and guidelines for ESG disclosure becoming more stringent there is evidence attitudes are changing around ESG that will affect how shareholders make their voting and investment decisions in the future. Ahead of the upcoming ESG Integration Forum – Summer, taking place in New York on June 27, Governance Intelligence sister publication IR Magazine spoke to Marina Severinovsky, head of sustainability for the Americas at asset management firm Schroders, who…
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CSRD will shape reporting by companies outside its scope, survey finds
Most companies will align with the EU’s landmark ESG regulation regardless of whether it applies to them, according to poll New research shows that the majority – 81 percent – of companies not subject to the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) intend to meet its disclosure requirements in some shape or form. The survey of more than 2,000 people working in corporate reporting, sustainability or related functions carried out by Workiva also finds that respondents almost unanimously consider meeting the demands of mandates such as the CSRD as the most pressing challenge ahead of them. Those polled by Workiva…
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How to take control of your ESG data-management processes, according to reporting experts
Collaboration is key, say speakers at recent Governance Intelligence and IR Magazine webinar As regulators and market operators around the world tighten their requirements for companies’ ESG reporting standards, many corporate teams are re-evaluating how their organization handles sustainability data management in an effort to render the – often complicated – process as manageable as possible. This was the task ahead of the panelists on a recent Governance Intelligence and IR Magazine webinar, titled ‘How to take control of your ESG data-management processes’. To start, Sarah Fortt, partner at Latham & Watkins, laid the groundwork for discussion by delving into…