Raj Thamotheram

The panelists are actually in agreement without realizing it! Investors are, to generalize, doing a pretty bad job at stewardship. Just take Tesco as a very recent case study in how investors enable dysfunctional corporate behaviour (my op-eds this month & November have details). The challenge with issues which are systemic and longer-term (e.g. climate change) is even bigger. In fact 85% of IPE’s audience at the recent Awards ceremony agreed that they are badly prepared. Either investors should be required by regulators to step up to the challenge: voluntary only initiatives have been a consistent failure as we see from the many re-incarnations of the investor forums in the UK. Or the norm that companies should be run with shareholders as the primary stakeholder should change. Investors simple can’t have it both ways. Of course the best answer is for asset owners to have different expectations and force this change down the supply chain. Amin Rajan, commissioned by Amundi, has recently asked EU pension funds in what areas they expect to see improvements from their fund managers if managers are to get mandates in the future (see Figure 4.3, page 44, “The Alpha behind Alpha”). ESG/stewardship is not even mentioned! EU funds are doing something on these issues – in fact EU funds general ahead of peers in other countries – but there is clearly a need for more joined-up thinking by senior pension fund executives. Once funds have stepped up to the challenge they will be in a much better position to challenge governments to do the same – at the moment the blame game is a 2 way project!