Latest Press Coverage
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Trustee briefing: Corporate governance (26.01.2012)As large institutional investors with responsibility for significant financial assets, it is vital for occupational pension schemes to set a high standard when it comes to corporate governance. But although most trustees recognise these issues are important, many are unsure how to ensure the companies they invest in maintain good levels of corporate governance |
FairPensions question obligation to invest in tobacco
FairPensions' Policy Officer, Christine Berry, challenges local authorities' reasoning behind investments in tobacco on BBC Radio Leeds (24.01.2012) and BBC Radio London (25.01.2012) Listen to Christine Berry's comments on BBC Leeds and BBC London |
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Councils told to stub out big tobacco pension deals (24.01.2012)Hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayers' money has been invested in the tobacco industry by councils which next year take on responsibility for public health, an investigation by The Independent has revealed. Read more on FairPensions' joint briefing with ASH on tobacco investments |
Business interests? Cable refuses to legislate on executive pay (23.01.2012)While it appears there will be a bill to give shareholders a 'binding vote' on executive pay, Mr Cable backed down from the more radical proposals put forward by the high pay commission. FairPensions comments on Vince Cable's proposals for a binding vote |
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Jon Cruddas wades in on responsible capitalism debate (20.01.2012)Labour leftwinger Jon Cruddas has joined the debate on responsible capitalism by calling for all shareholders to be forced to disclose their voting practices at company annual general meetings. He said big shareholders, who manage millions of people's pension savings, have to be made more accountable to the people whose money they look after. FairPensions comments on increasing shareholder accountability |
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Jon Cruddas on responsible capitalism (20.01.2012)The Labour MP for Dagenham will suggest to the Commons this afternoon that the government is not going far enough and that pensions funds must be more accountable to the people whose money they invest. |
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UK's high-carbon investment risky, central bank told (19.01.2012)The Bank of England should look into how Britain's exposure to high carbon emitting investments might harm the UK's financial system and long-term economic growth prospects, a coalition of investors, academics and environmentalists said on Thursday. More on FairPensions' concerns about the UK's high-carbon investments |
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The new age of shareholder power (13.01.2012)David Cameron pledged this week to give shareholders new powers to vote to curb excessive executive pay. Under the plans investors will, for the first time, have the right to veto multimillion fat-cat packages at banks and big businesses. |
Cameron’s excessive executive pay move won’t solve problem (10.01.2012)Campaigning groups have welcomed the government's move to tackle spiralling executive pay, but warn giving shareholders a binding vote is not enough to stall the practice. |
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Anger as council pensions cash in on tobacco (10.01.2012)YORKSHIRE council pension funds are investing hundreds of millions of pounds in tobacco companies and global corporations accused of environmental abuses. |
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Who is watching the pay watchmen? (09.01.2012)Britain's top institutional investors are meant to be the standard-bearers for shareholder engagement. They have been told - by the Prime Minister, no less - to lead a glorious fightback against the deep-rooted culture of boardroom extravagance on pay. |
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Finance should be our servant, not our master (09.01.2012)Thoughtful stewardship is key to re-engineering a more sustainable investment system, says Mark Goyder |
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How can we fight child poverty without hitting people's pockets? (08.12.2011)Britons, it would appear, are becoming increasingly individualistic and less willing to pay higher taxes to support healthcare spending, education and protecting the environment. Has the time come to explore ways to help the poorest in society without increasing the amount of tax we have pay? |
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Clegg to block excess exec pay? (05.12.2011)Deputy prime minister Nick Clegg has promised to tackle "abhorrent" fat cat pay with a get-tough package of more transparency and accountability aimed at company and City chief execs. |
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Bankers responsible for short-termismBankers, executive pay and "pressure for unreasonable returns" have pushed UK companies towards a culture of short termism, according to submissions made to Vince Cable's Kay Review. |
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Misinterpreted fiduciary duty driving short-termism, says FairPensionsA misinterpreted sense of fiduciary duty in the investment chain is contributing to market short-termism, says campaign group FairPensions. |
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Hush! It's a self fulfilling prophecyRedesigning pension systems to create the right sort was the subject of another debate last week, held by FairPensions. |
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Large majority of pension funds too small to succeedThe large majority of pension funds are too small and too reliant on unnecessarily complex governance structures to succeed, Keith Ambachtsheer of the Rotman International Centre for Pension Management (ICPM) has argued. |
FairPensions Annual Lecture: The 5 drivers of high performance schemesPension funds can change the face of modern capitalism if their investment and governance structures are fundamentally redesigned. |
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Calls mount for action on executive pay awards (03.10.2011)Escalating executive pay levels and the mismatch between remuneration and company performance are causing increasing concern among shareholders, regulators, the general public and even politicians. |
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More Shareholder Say on Pay 'is Impractical' (26.09.2011)FairPensions responds to lawyers claims that voting on executive remuneration would be impractical. |
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Verdicts on Vince Cable's speech (20.09.2011)Experts give their views on different aspects of Vince Cable's speech. Christine Berry comments alongside Polly Toynbee, Quentin Letts and others. |
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UK pension funds welcome proposals on executive remuneration (20.09.2011)Coverage of our response to the discussion paper released by BIS on executive remuneration. |
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Shareholders need to get tough on executive salaries (19.09.2011)A comment piece by our policy officer, Christine Berry, on the idea of giving shareholders a binding vote on executive pay. |
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Shareholders might get greater say in companies' remuneration policies (19.09.2011)Explanations from remuneration committees justifying excessive pay deals without any great performance should be added to annual company reports. |
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UK considers introducing binding shareholder votes on executive pay (19.09.2011)The UK government is mulling the idea of giving shareholders a binding vote on executive pay. |
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Tax and ethics: Can pay, should pay (31.08.2011)As tax blasts its way onto the public agenda, companies should concentrate on where they pay, as well as how much. |
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Local government tobacco investor list grows (24.08.2011)One organisation, Fairpensions, which promotes responsible investment by pension funds and fund managers, has questioned the argument that schemes have an obligation to maximise profit at any cost. |
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UK Scheme Battles Criticism for £24M Tobacco Investment (24.08.2011)FairPensions, for example, a UK-based advocacy group that recently published a report on investors' legal duties, has questioned the argument that pension funds have an obligation to maximize profit at any cost. |
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Kent under fire for scheme's £24m tobacco investment (24.08.2011)The local authority fund invests about £13.5m in the Altria Group; £3.6m in Philip Morris; £3.5m in Imperial Tobacco; and £3.4m in Japan Tobacco - about 1% of its total equity investments. |
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€3.6bn UK fund criticised over tobacco holdings (24.08.2011)Kent County Council in southeast England has been criticised over its £3.2bn (€3.6bn) pension fund's £24m investment in four tobacco companies. |
Kent under fire for scheme's £24m tobacco investment (24.08.2011)Kent County Council has come under fire from campaign groups for investing £24m of its pension fund portfolio in tobacco companies. |
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KCC Defends Decision to Invest in Tobacco Firms (23.08.2011)FairPensions, who recently published a report on investors' legal duties, has questioned the argument that pension funds have an obligation to maximise profit at any cost. |
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Inserting human right into telecoms one company at a time (21.08.2011)Vodafone, who has been operating in Egypt since 1998 and whose Egyptian operations are partially owned by Telecom Egypt, was one of three operators that shutdown their services late January. |
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RI Briefing (17.08.2011)Campaign group FairPensions has said investors should be concerned about the "lack of transparency" from oil major Shell over the current North Sea oil spill... |
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UK Regulators Step Up Pressure On Shell Over Oil Spill (16.08.2011)Facing scrutiny from regulators over a large oil spill in the North Sea that continued for a sixth day, Royal Dutch Shell PLC (RDSA) Tuesday acknowledged that some oil is still leaking from a pipeline that it had repaired last week. |
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UK Regulators Step Up Pressure On Shell Over Oil Spill (16.08.2011)Facing scrutiny from regulators over a large oil spill in the North Sea that continued for a sixth day, Royal Dutch Shell PLC (RDSA) Tuesday acknowledged that some oil is still leaking from a pipeline that it had repaired last week. |
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Oil leak is threat to Shell hope in Arctic (16.08.2011)But Royal Dutch Shell's spillage of 1,300 barrels of crude into the North Sea from the Gannet field is still a big headache for the company as it tries to convince regulators it should be allowed to carry out drilling in the Arctic. |
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Shell North Sea Oil Spill- Live Blog (16.08.2011)While not comparable in scale to the spill in the Gulf of Mexico, investors should be increasingly worried that Shell's response and lack of transparency to date echoes BP's crisis management failures. |
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Shedding light on Vodafone's digital darkness (27.06.2011)A company like Vodafone is well aware that its AGM is the kind of place that will attract some less than friendly faces on the doorstep. Guilty conscience? Indeed. |
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Investment: Aiming for a good outcome (27.07.2011)When it comes to ensuring good investment outcomes, the role played by qualified actuaries as investment consultants is vital. |
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Vodafone's Bad Call on Egypt (26.07.2011)Anthony Hilton used his 'City Comment' piece to support our calls for Vodafone to consider the risks assosiated with their complicity with repressive regimes. Print Only |
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Vodafone faces pressure over Egypt protests (25.07.2011)Campaigners will seek to use Vodafone's annual meeting on Tuesday to call on the mobile phone group to prevent a repetition of how its network in Egypt was used to carry propaganda on behalf of the country's former ruler. |
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Trustees must accept new fiduciary duties (25.07.2011)The complaint that trustees must act as 'moral policemen' misses the point, says FairPensions' Christine Berry. |
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Flex your muscles on ethical investing, low-cost tracker funds are urged (17.07.2011)Catherine Howarth of the charity fairpensions.org.uk, which campaigns for greater corporate accountability to private investors, believes fund companies that manage trackers have a responsibility to engage with boards and press for improvement where necessary. |
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Investors should consider implications of hacking scandal (08.07.2011)After the hacking allegations directed at the News of the World, pension investors should consider the implications for the proposed BSkyB buyout by News International, FairPensions said. |
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Shares in Rupert Murdoch's companies tumble as investors take fright (08.07.2011)Investors in companies controlled by Rupert Murdoch have been dumping the shares amid fears on both sides of the Atlantic over the fallout from the phone-hacking scandal at the News of the World.
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Phone hacking: Questions over BSkyB deal as investors feel brunt of scandal (08.07.2011)It says investors in companies controlled by Rupert Murdoch have been dumping the shares amid fears over the fallout from the phone-hacking scandal which prompted The News of the World's parent company News International to close the publication. |
News of the World Live Blog (07.07.2011)Live coverage of the News of the World Hacking Scandal. FairPensions issue a statement. |
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RI analysis: institutional investors, ESG and News Corp.With News Corp.'s UK media operations currently at the eye of a storm as a result of the current phone hacking scandal, what is the stance of institutional investors in dealing with environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues at the company? |
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Britain's Army of Small Investors (25.06.2011)Most of us are business owners - even if we don't know it. Eight out of ten of us have shares in Britain's biggest companies, mostly through the pension savings built up privately or through work. |
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Christine Berry asks what a trustee's fiduciary responsibility really entails (May 2011)Pension fund trustees are acutely conscious of their fiduciary duty to act in members' best interests. But what does that duty mean in practice in the increasingly complex world of modern pension saving? |
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Women in pension funds: A small but talented pool (26.05.2011)Lockwood Gibb's Sarah Dudney struggles to match Ernst & Young's top 50 women in hedge funds. |
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It's time to put pension members' interests first (06.05.2011)FairPensions, the NGO lobby group, is among those looking at the scope of pension fund fiduciary duty. Integrated corporate reporting of ESG and financial issues is gaining ground. |
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The Duty to be an Enlightened Fiduciary (02.05.2011)An op-ed piece about Fiduciary Obligation by Christine Berry from FairPensions. |
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Catherine Howarth: Driving Force of the Pensions Lobby (24.04.2011)The pensions industry often bemoans the lack of interest pension scheme members take in how their money is invested. Educating and engaging with members, particularly of defined contribution schemes, is seen as a means to achieve better pension outcomes. |
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FairPensions exposes conflict at the heart of pensions (19.04.2011)FairPensions has produced an in-depth report which lifts the lid on the conflicts of interest at the heart of pensions management, and calls on institutional investors to mend their ways by adopting what it calls an "enlightened fiduciary" model. |
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Putting the Fiduciary in 'Fiduciary Management' (19.04.2011)Trustees outsource more and more of the key decisions about how a fund is invested, but cannot renounce their fiduciary duties: in other words, they delegate power without responsibility. |
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BP AGM as it HappenedThe Telegraph followed our team of tweeters from inside the BP AGM. |
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FairPensions comment on BP AGM (14.04.2011)Louise Rouse, Director of Engagement at FairPensions, was invited onto the 7 O'clock news on Al Jazeera to comment on the days events at The BP AGM. |
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The majority of British investors have been conspicuous only by their silence (13.04.2011)FairPensions, the advocacy group, urged BP shareholders to register their dissatisfaction with the company. It said: "Although investors from the US and continental Europe have been coming forward to declare their voting intentions...." |
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FairPensions calls for UK investors to speak up ahead of BP AGM (12.04.2011)Charity group FairPensions has called on UK investors to declare their voting intentions in advance of BP's AGM in London this week. |
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Time to air fiduciary issues at AGMs (11.04.2011)As we approach the first AGM season since the introduction of the Stewardship Code in the UK, the spotlight is shifting onto the voting decisions of institutional investors. |
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The shareholder awakens (07.04.2011)FairPensions, a lobby group, issued a report calling for a tightening of the fiduciary-responsibility law for pension funds, insurers and other big investors who manage people's money |
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Investor Group Tells Companies to Come Clean on Carbon (04.04.2011)FairPensions, a charity that promotes responsible investment, is calling for mandatory carbon reporting to be enacted as soon as possible to benefit both the environment and pension savers. |
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Pension Middlemen Decide to Top Up Their Fees Despite Paltry Returns for Investors (31.03.2011)A damning report from charity FairPensions found that while returns on pensions collapsed to 1.1 per cent per year between 2002 and 2007, payments to middlemen (such as fund managers and consultants) rose by more than 50 per cent. |
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Government and Regulator to Define Fiduciary Duties (31.03.2011)Commenting on the findings from the report, Christine Berry from FairPensions said: "many don't understand what fiduciary duty is. It is often perceived as maximising shareholder value, but that is written nowhere in case law." . |
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Review of Fiduciary Obligations Needed- FairPensions (31.03.2011)An ‘enlightened fiduciary' model should be put in place for institutional investors to parallel the new duties of company directors introduced in 2006, said FairPensions. |
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Trustee Investment 'Focus Too Much on Financial Return' (30.03.2011)Charity trustees put too much emphasis on financial return when investing, and too little on their duty to beneficiaries, according to a new report from the ethical investment organisation FairPensions. |
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Government Guidance Needed to Clarify Fiduciary Responsibility (30.03.2011)Campaign group Fair Pensions has called for existing corporate legislation covering directors' responsibilities to be the model for clarifying institutional investors' fiduciary responsibility and free them up to take account of responsible investment. |
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UK Schemes Urged to Act on The Spirit of The Law 14.03.2011UK – Pension funds must act on the spirit rather than purely the letter of the law when it comes to matters of voter disclosure, a member of the UK House of Lords has insisted. |
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Interview with Catherine Howarth 10.03.2011This in depth interview with our CEO Catherine Howarth looks at mobilizing the power of pension funds to change corporate bahaviour. |
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London's Low Wage Economy 04.03.2011A response to David Cohen's articles by FairPensions' CEO Catherine Howarth. Full Story |
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Proposal to improve pension fund ESG disclosure tabled in UK Parliament 03.03.2011Pension funds in the UK may have to disclose more on Full Story |
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Towards Truly Responsible shareholder Activism 22.02.2011Fairpensions: Individuals are concerned about the company's financial performance but are also not afraid to say – we believe in profit, but not at any cost. And that's truly responsible shareholder activism. |
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Most green funds hold oil companies 18.02.2011"FairPensions, claimed that the majority of Britain's biggest occupational pension schemes were keeping their members in the dark about the environmental and social impact of their investments." |
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Short Termism Requires Long Term Vision 16.01.2011
Fairpensions is a leading example of a move towards understanding and challenging pensions and investment decisions. |
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Managers fall short on code detail. 13.12.10FairPensions has called for greater transparency in the UK asset manager industry on voting and engagement disclosure in line with the new Stewardship Code. Our CEO suggests that "positive pressure needs to come from trustees". Full story |
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Are pension managers responsible? 13.12.10In an interview with the BBC that followed FairPensions' release of 'Stewardship in the Spotlight', our Director of Investor Engagement encourages the general public to "get on top of what's happening with their money". |
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FairPensions responds to Vince Cable's speech to the Liberal Democrat conference 22.09.10
FairPensions has supported Vince Cable's call for more shareholder influence over governance issues, but warns that the framework of the proposed OFR is needed to help investors engage responsibly. |
FairPensions targets BP in nationwide environmental campaign 13.09.10FairPensions has called on UK scheme members to question the oil industry's "increasingly risky business model" in the wake of the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster |
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Pension campaign to target oil companies 13.09.10A new campaign lanuched by FairPensions and Greenpeace hope to harness the power of shareholders to force companies to prepare for future catastrophes in order to avoid another Deepwater oil spill. |
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A Landmark Year for Pensions 09.102010 marks the 10th anniversary of the introduction of the regulations that enforced the publishing of Statments of Investment Principles. It also saw the US struggle with the biggest oil spill in its history. FairPensions' Director of Investor Engagement, Louise Rouse examines how these two events are linked and explores how the consequence of poor ESG decisions is often financial loss. |
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In the slick of it 01.07.10FairPensions: The implications that withholding of the dividend will have for UK pension funds highlights the potential for this crisis to damage UK savings and the need for investors to put in place measures to guard against such risks in the future. |
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BP debacle highlights need for responsible ownership 02.06.10FairPensions: BP's Gulf of Mexico oil spill raises further evidence of concerns about BP's long-term risk management, gaps in investor scrutiny and low cost solutions. |
