July 2021

 


Pro Governance

Promoting Good Corporate Governance

    

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Pensions - Regulation and Policy


We favour that the State provides all citizens with a pension that supports them with the basic necessities of life. Everyone would get the same pension and therefore the system would be simple to operate and cheap to run.



Most distortions in pension provision are caused by the arbitrary introduction of piecemeal legislation and tax rules that were intended to favour one or the other political constituency close to the party in power at the time.



We also think that work-related pension provision should be on an equal basis for all employees. 'Executive' Pension schemes allows senior management not to have the interest of all employees at heart when designing company or industry-wide pension schemes.

MORE ON PENSION REGULATION AND POLICY

 


 

About Pro Governance


Our Mission is to campaign for the protection of investors and savers by promoting good corporate governance.

We also believe that the wider spread of share ownership is in itself a public good and may sometimes even be preferable to higher economic efficiency.

Shareholders in publicly listed companies are widely dispersed and cannot micro-manage the affairs of the companies they are invested in. The international nature of today's shareholder registers make this also impossible for large institutional investors.

On the other hand, abuses that have developed over the past few years make it imperative that company managements are supervised in a more efficient way.

Tax incentives and institutional constraints have favoured the growth of large institutional investors at the expense of small individual shareholders. This makes it more important than ever that these investors behave like fiduciaries and have the interests of their clients at heart.

This means that the business of money management cannot be treated like any other profit-maximising business. Like the medical, legal or academic professions the interest of the clients has to have priority when critical decisions have to be made with regard to companies the money managers are invested in.

We at Pro-Gov think that the establishment of an effective international forum combining representatives from the national organisations of individual shareholders and investors will be an effective step in the direction of improving corporate governance.

At the moment the corporate Governance discussion is limited to academics, journalists in the quality business press, institutional shareholders and companies and their business associations as well as politicians. The one party missing on the table are the real investors who - with some exceptions - voiceless in the debate.

"The scandal isn't what's illegal; it's what's legal"
(Michael Kinsley)

 

 

 



 

 

   
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