Shareholder Rights Directive II

Partner Louis Barbier comments to Pensions & Investments on the new European Union regulation that will make pay disclosure mandatory, allowing European investors to further probe executives on pay at annual general meetings. The new directive goes into effect in June 2019 and will ask companies to supply information about the remuneration of their top executives to asset owners and money managers.

Louis Barbier said “Asset owners will be scrutinizing money managers to be better ‘stewards’ of assets under the directive,” by making the reporting process less generic. Louis added: “Now investors will have to show they are not solely relying on proxy advisory firms’ recommendations to inform their voting decision. Money managers will have to do more work and demonstrate why they have taken (certain) views when (conducting the) voting in accordance with the underlying asset owners’ guidelines.”

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