Neil Baker

The Ontario Securities Commission has launched a policy review that could see listed company shareholders get a mandatory “say-on-pay” vote. The OSC said it had been watching how other regulators around the world had been dealing with say-on-pay. The United Kingdom, Australia and some European countries already require listed companies to give shareholders a non-binding […]

British listed companies would have a new requirement to produce “balanced and fair” annual reports under rules proposed by the country’s corporate regulator. The law already requires that certain sections of company annual reports are fair and accurate, but this does not extend to important areas such as the chairman’s statement and the director’s narrative […]

Hong Kong has published draft legislation aimed at modernizing company law in the territory. The new Companies Bill includes a series of measures to improve corporate governance and strengthen shareholder rights. Other key changes in the Bill are a clarification of directors’ responsibilities and their duty of care and new disclosure requirements for companies. These […]

Sure, U.S. companies will have plenty of pressures to keep their compliance departments busy in 2011—but they’ll need to keep a close eye on new regulatory and enforcement plans across Europe as well. Global regulators, accounting standard setters, and foreign enforcement agencies have a full pipeline of new initiatives, many of which will affect U.S. […]

Japan is planning new rules to punish speculators who short-sell company shares ahead of new share issues. The move is aimed at reducing insider dealing. The Financial Services Agency said the rules would target investors who short-sell shares in the gap between a new issue being announced and its pricing being confirmed. Under the new […]

A British judge has finally accepted a controversial plea bargain reached by the Serious Fraud Office and arms company BAE Systems, but only after heavily criticizing the terms of the deal. Justice Bean said the plea agreement was “loosely and perhaps hastily drafted” and he was “surprised” that the SFO had given BAE “a blanket […]

A proxy voting agency says it has worked out an objective way of calculating whether companies have paid “excessive” bonuses to their directors. The agency, Manifest, says the technique will help investors to decide whether to vote in favor of the bonus element of a company’s pay plans. Manifest developed the technique with Swiss research […]

U.K. regulator the Financial Reporting Council has rejected European Commission proposals aimed at breaking the Big Four accounting firms’ dominance of the market for listed company audits. The FRC said it was opposed to a wholesale ban on firms selling extra services to their audit clients, the forcible creation of audit-only firms, and the mandatory […]

The French government has passed a controversial law that, according to governance critics, will make it harder for foreign shareholders to exercise their voting rights. President Nicolas Sarkozy signed a law this week that amends the country’s Commercial Code, adding new measures about how voting works at company general meetings. The amendments are aimed at all shareholders, […]

The British government has begun to provide specific guidance on how companies can avoid prosecution under the country’s tough new anti-bribery laws, but it will be little comfort to compliance executives—especially those at U.S. companies, still unclear when they might face prosecution. Britain passed its Bribery Act earlier this year, stung by criticism that the […]