LAPFF webinar highlights video 2020 Dec 2-4

Check out highlights of the Local Authority Pension Fund Forum virtual conference for 2020 (only 1 minute 40 secs). Despite the challenges of online webinars there was a number of excellent speakers and lively panel debates. 

Check out some provocative statements from different speakers on varied subjects such as "the only bank willing to do business with Donald Trump...ending up with heroin in a vending machine...everyone wants to talk about achieving Net Zero but not about the social consequences...Covid is a signal that we are not managing the planet...companies are not publishing the Covid deaths of their workers since it is "not a very nice statistic"...Covid has made us realise how reliant we are on workers who are not well paid"

Lets look forward to the possibility of attending a physical conference next year in lovely Bournemouth. 

I will post a LAPFF report on the conference later including the session I moderated on Workforce engagement with representatives from the TUC, FRC and an actual real life worker director on a company board. . 

Financial Reporting Council "Why we are too lazy and owners too stupid to vote in pooled pension funds"

The Financial Reporting Council (FRC) is a well known "mates club" of financial services industry representatives pretending to be a UK independent regulator on corporate governance and investment.

Top Finance blogger Tom P at "Labour and Capital" comments on the latest FRC report that dismisses attempts by pension schemes who invest in pooled funds to be able to vote on their shareholding.

As Tom points out there is no good reason for this not happening whatsoever. The only reasons I can see is that most (not all) asset managers are just too lazy to arrange this and think that asset owners are too stupid to be able to vote. 

I am also forced to conclude that the FRC doesn't want pesky share owners to be able to vote because they may have the blooming cheek to vote down their mates obscene (and growing) executive pay and other super generous perks.

Fidelity: the big bad wolf?

I haven't had a pop at Fidelity Fund managers for a while. So being Christmas and all that...I thought it was about time I had a go at one of the biggest single political donors to the Conservative Party.

Now, Fidelity is a private company and if they want to give money to the Tories then fair enough. But what isn’t on is that they don’t disclose this to the clients. Not only do they not disclose it but they vote in other Companies AGM’s to give even more money to the Tories. Again without properly disclosing it. They also give money to pro-tory policy organisations, again, without properly disclosing it. Anyway, this is an email I sent this evening to the Financial Reporting Council (FRC).
I’ll let you know what happens.

“Dear Baroness Hogg

I wish to bring to the attention of the Financial Reporting Council my concern that fund managers Fidelity (FIL) don’t disclose their political donations to the Conservative Party as a conflict of interest under the “conflicts section” of their stewardship code statement here: https://www.fidelity.co.uk/investor/about/uk-stewardship-code/uk-stewardship-code.page?smid=geiz5krb

They make significant political donations to one UK political party (£400,000 to the Conservative Party in the last three years) yet also get to vote on resolutions seeking authority to make political donations, and in practice they have voted in favour of at least one company (Caledonia Investments) seeking to make donations to the same party. They also funded the 2011 anti-AV campaign, despite the fact that they are employed by some funds where the beneficiaries may have a different view (i.e. a majority of voters in Camden were pro AV in the referendum yet the Camden Council LGPS fund employs FIL).

I believe that Fidelity should at least disclose these donations, and the possible conflict with client views/interests, in its Stewardship Code statement. I would be grateful of your view of this matter. Yours sincerely"