As the UK’s principal organisation representing the interests of individual shareholders, we play an active role in seeking to influence government and the various regulatory bodies on matters which affect those interests. It is a feature of the strength of our membership that we are able to draw upon considerable experience, professional as well as investment, to ‘punch above our weight’.
Over the past two years, this activity has included close co-operation with a ‘coalition’ of pension funds and other institutional long term investors whose interests are, broadly speaking, aligned with ours. This co-operation has given us a stronger voice on accounting and auditing matters, in an endeavour to ensure that the serious errors which led to the banking crisis and failure or near failure of other companies do not occur again.
Most recently, we have joined others to send a strong message to the Financial Reporting Council, responsible for the Corporate Governance Code, that its proposed weakening of the ‘going concern’ assurances currently required of company directors is not acceptable. A copy of the letter may be found here.
The UK Shareholders’ Association welcomes as members investors who would like to associate themselves with our policy work, as well as those who would like to take advantage of our analyst-style meetings with top company executives.