Christmas Procrastination

'Tis the season to procrastinate. So, for my final blog post of the year before I disappear for Christmas and New Year's here are some of my favourite Dilbert  PhD comics and one from stus from the semester. Enjoy!

Facts and figures about Directors

Directors. Who are they? What do they do? The decision from Mond v Bowles which I blogged about briefly here states that there is no definition of a non-executive in the Companies Act 2006.

Well, for one that is a bit of a presumption to make without really discussing the issue properly. For one, I can clearly see good arguments for and against non-executives being included under the definition in section 250 of the Companies Act. I hope to blog about this point in more detail at a later date.

For now, I have begun to run some analyses of directors who served on FTSE 100 boards between 2006 and 2010.

Below are some figures of executive and non-executive directors multiple directorships and remuneration in 2006 and 2010 from 30 FTSE 100 companies. Please note the following: These figures only represent the directors who served for the full year and does not yet account for those joining or leaving the board during the year. Also bear in mind the data was collected using my definition of a multiple directorship and remuneration. For 2006 one firm did not have any executive director serve for the full year. The data does also not account for the actual position held by the director as of yet for multiple directorships. Finally, the data is collected at company level. 

Year	Type	Number of directors	Mean Remuneration	Standard Error	Mean Multiple Directorships	Standard Error
2006	Exec	111	£5829724	908162.292	2.48	.414
2006	NED	201	£695500	71812.419	13.77	1.273
2010	Exec	102	£6753633	1039722.564	2.37	.354
2010	NED	200	£943095.67	108995.846	13.67	.971

Interestingly you will observe the increase of almost £250,000 paid to non-executives with less non-executives actually serving for the full year. The standard errors for remuneration all seem to be increasing which may suggest larger firms i.e. banks are increasing pay at a faster rate than smaller FTSE 100 companies.

Multiple directorships on the other hand do not seem to be greatly affected from these descriptive statistics by remuneration. Although, non-executive multiple directorships do seem to be declining after 2008, which I have reported elsewhere on my blog in regards to banks, after a steady rise from 2006-2008.

Forthcoming Publication in ICCLR

I blogged a couple of months ago that my submission to the International Company and Commercial Law Review had been accepted. See here. The publication on the court's power to order shareholder meetings under the s306 of the Companies Act 2006 is due out in January's edition of the Journal and will soon be available to view.

If you cannot wait that long... here are some of my early thoughts on the idea that I blogged about back in August. Demonstrating one of the benefits of a blog as a good way to express and record ideas.

WhatUni? award for UEA

The University of East Anglia has been ranked first in the overall rating of Universities in the WhatUni? student choice awards. See here and here.

UEA was ranked first in categories student union and accommodation and was ranked in the top 10 of the other categories that included job prospects (5th) and courses and lecturers (2nd).

If you are looking to apply you can order a prospectus here. You can also visit the law school's website here or the LL.B microsite here.  

A collection of responses to the EU Green Paper on Corporate Governance

In April the EU published a Green Paper on Corporate Governance in the EU. Below are links to a collection of responses to the Green Paper from different bodies.

Company law experts response

AP4 Swedish Pension Fund

Forsta AP pension fund response

Ecoda response

LSGE response
FRC response

NSFM response

UK BIS response
NAPF response
Danish shareholders' association response
German response
IOD response
IRS response
GC 100 response

European Commission to take Poland and Italy to Court

The EC is to take Poland and Italy to court for failing to complete the transposition of the third Directive on capital requirements. See here for press release.

Directive 2010/76/EU, which amends Directives 2006/48/EC and 2006/49/EC, requires banks and investment companies are financially sound by laying down rules on capital requirements that cover their risks to protect depositors.

It also requires appropriate remuneration policies that do not encourage or reward excessive risk taking; and this aims to combat remuneration incentive based practices that may have unfortunate consequences. Supervising authorities are allowed to impose penalties on banks that do not comply with these requirements. How the court identifies what is a "poorly designed remuneration structure" will be interesting to see. Although the Directive does lay down guidance as to what is an appropriate remuneration structure for credit institutions i.e. Annex I, which amends Annex V of the 2006/48/EC Directive on remuneration policies.

Finally, the Directive also lays down a ratio for capital specifically earmarked for re-securitisation to ensure banks take due regard to the risks involved with this kind of complex financial product.

The EC hopes to take advantage of the new possibility provided by the Lisbon Treaty to impose daily penalty payments on Member States that have not transposed the Directive in full by the date of its judgment establishing non-compliance. In this case the penalty requested for Italy €96446.70/day and for Poland €37396.80/day.