Company voting records
We are active shareholders of the companies we invest in and we engage with these companies to encourage them to adopt higher standards of governance and corporate responsibility.
As part of our engagement process, we want to be upfront and clear about how we support good corporate governance practices (and oppose bad ones) through the way we vote at company AGMs. The Co-operative Asset Management was the first UK investor to publish its voting record online, a practice now increasingly adopted by fund management groups offering responsible investments.
As active shareholders, we vote at all the AGMs of the companies we invest in. That's over 1600 UK companies amounting to around £19 billion of assets covered by our responsible investment team on behalf of a wide range of clients. For our core funds available to investment professionals (our Sustainable Leaders, UK Growth with Income and UK Growth funds), we have shown you below our 2007 voting record for some of the companies which these funds invest in where we have abstained or voted against particular resolutions. You can click on each company name to get more details about what we voted on and how we voted. For more information on our full voting record, please email us.
Last year, we launched a campaign to target excessive earning in the boardroom and called upon other financial institutions to join forces with us in voting against bad practice.
Directors' pay is important to investors for several reasons. Investors need to know that the board is looking after shareholders' interests, not just pursuing their own. Targets for bonuses need to be challenging and motivate best performance. When pay isn't matched by performance, shareholders pick up the bill. And there's a real risk to reputation and brand value when pay differences between the board and staff get too stretched.
When an issue is serious we'll attend the AGM – we've had a number of high-profile successes. Last year we asked the Board of United Business Media why their departing CEO received a £250,000 bonus for "ensuring an orderly transition" to his replacement. Would you get a bonus for doing this? We considered it a waste of our customers' money. The Board, under siege from shareholders, relented and the bonus was handed back.
