With the European Commission planning to introduce a tougher model of corporate oversight, Britain’s Financial Reporting Council is fighting to defend its more flexible “comply or explain” approach.
The FRC’s latest salvo is a report urging all companies to reveal more detail about their governance arrangements, even if they aren’t doing anything unusual that needs explaining. But the regulator has admitted that companies with securities listed jointly in London and the United States could expose themselves to extra legal risks if they start make the kind of disclosures it wants to see.
