The Investment Association calls for a new body to hold Directors to account

Wednesday 13 June 2018

The Government should create a new, single authority with the power to punish negligent Directors, according to the Investment Association (IA), the trade body that represents UK investment managers, whose 240 members collectively manage over £6.9 trillion on behalf of clients. The IA calls for a single authority to take responsibility for sanctioning Directors who do not meet their duties and has proposed a set of recommendations in its response to the BEIS consultation on insolvency and corporate governance.

There has been an increasing focus on Director behaviour in recent years, with much more emphasis on boardroom performance and director accountability. The IA’s Public Register has recorded 28 companies where 20 per cent or more of shareholders have voted against a director resolution including director re-election in the 2018 AGM season. The IA is calling for the Government to replace the fragmented system of Director sanctions with one single body to provide better scrutiny over sanctioning for Directors who are negligent in fulfilling their duties.

Andrew Ninian, Director of Stewardship and Corporate Governance at the Investment Association, said:

“It is essential that Directors of companies are held accountable and appropriately sanctioned when they negligently fail to meet their duties. Recent high profile examples have clearly demonstrated that the current framework for sanctioning needs re-thinking.

“The current system of sanctions is fragmented between many different authorities, and often Directors are only sanctioned as a result of investigations after a company goes into insolvency. By uniting the powers and responsibilities, we would be giving real teeth to a single body who could then hold any Directors to account for being negligent of their duties.”

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For more information contact:

• Anisha Patel, Head of Communications: [email protected]
• Ben Rathe, Senior Communications Manager: [email protected]
• T +44 (0)20 7269 4696

About the Investment Association (IA):

• The IA champions UK asset management, supporting British savers, investors and businesses. Our 240 members manage £6.9 trillion of assets and employ 93,500 people across the UK.
• Our mission is to make investment better. Better for clients, so they achieve their financial goals. Better for companies, so they get the capital they need to grow. And better for the economy, so everyone prospers.
• Our purpose is to ensure investment managers are in the best possible position to:
  • Build people’s resilience to financial adversity
  • Help people achieve their financial aspirations
  • Enable people to maintain a decent standard of living as they grow older
  • Contribute to economic growth through the efficient allocation of capital.
• The money our members manage is in a wide variety of investment vehicles including authorised investment funds, pension funds and stocks and shares ISAs.
• The UK is the second largest investment management centre in the world, after the US and manages 37% of all assets managed in Europe.