A funny thing happened…

“We want to be together.” Remember that TV ad? It seems investors and boards are seeking to get closer, too. The Investor Forum, membership body for fund managers and pensions funds, is to open its doors to new members from listed company boards in a bid to heal relationships.

Relationships between boards and institutional investors are said to be “fractious” over issues such as big executive pay packages and compliance with corporate governance provisions.

Andy Griffiths, the soon-to-be-outgoing executive director of the Investor Forum, this week told the Financial Times that the meeting of investors with board members was about solutions. “It’s not about regulation. It’s not government telling us how to do things.

“It’s about market practitioners getting together and figuring out how to make their market work as well as it can.”

Last year, a City lobby group, the Capital Markets Industry Taskforce (CMIT), along with the London Stock Exchange, convinced government to roll back a long-planned set of new reporting requirements.

Both the CMIT and LSE’s chief executive Julia Hoggett argued that the UK is overdoing corporate governance standards and is therefore making the country uncompetitive compared to other capital markets. Hoggett has tried to interest the UK in higher pay levels for execs.

Anyway, whether governance is the problem is up for debate. We may have a bit correlation going on but, as we all know, that’s not causation. Still, at least investors and executives are getting together and that’s cosy, isn’t it?

It’s an ill wind…

Cheery news from London School of Economics law prof Alperen Afşin Gözlügöl, who says the climate crisis may bring about huge government intervention to save companies. Just as in some circumstances corporates are “too big to fail”, climate stresses could mean there are “too many to fail”, hence government coming to the rescue for many sickly corporates.

The more that climate mitigation lags, writes Gözlügöl, the more likely government will have to step in. “Climate change mitigation rightly attracts much attention from market places, regulators and scholars. However, there is an acute need to prepare for impacts that remain inevitable and those that will be more likely as mitigation efforts lag.”

You heard the gloomy news here, more or less first. First-ish then.

AI for one and one for AI

Speaking of gloomy, it seems many leaders executives aren’t… Gloomy, that is. In fact, a survey from accountancy mob HLB Global reveals that economic optimism has jumped by 14 points to 85%. And, it turns out, a big reason is a belief in AI. A circuit-shorting 65% of leaders say artificial intelligence is “the most important technology” over the next five years, while a screen-freezing 68% say AI is among the key tech driving innovation, creativity and productivity.

Mind you, if all companies install AI, you wonder who actually gets the competitive advantage? Just saying.