ICAEW.com works better with JavaScript enabled.

Shareholder relations

Find out more about shareholder relations

In this section

The UK Stewardship Code

Guidance and reports

Special Report 65 - Smart Reporting

This special report will be a handy go-to guide – we take you through the latest techniques and thinking behind the new smart world with which CFOs, and aspiring CFOs, must contend.

The Business Finance Guide

Alongside the online and interactive version, the Business Finance Guide can be downloaded as a single PDF document containing all of the explanations of the different finance options available, as well as information on how to approach a financing decision, the questions to ask and how to treat it as a business process.

Special Report 50: Business reporting

This special report contains a few essentials on reporting of use to finance manager, controller and directors, including micro entity reports, the visual impact of reports and lean accounting.

Guidance on limited liability agreements

A summary of the Financial Reporting Council guidance on limited liability agreements (LLAs) and the legal opinion we have obtained, with links to the original guidance.

Financial Reporting Disclosures: Market and Regulatory Failures

This report looks at the sources of this unhappiness in financial reporting disclosures and what can be done about it. The report argues that the current degree of dissatisfaction is to a large extent a predictable outcome of the regulatory framework. But this framework is itself a response to failures in the market for financial reporting information. And both market and regulatory failures in part reflect the inherent limitations of financial reporting. In this brief summary of the report, we concentrate on the regulatory issues.

Sustainability: the role of accountants

The concept of sustainability involves operating in a way that takes full account of an organisation’s impacts on the planet, its people and the future. This report illustrates UK, European and global initiatives to foster sustainable development, including steps taken by governments, businesses and other organisations.

Activist Investors

Shareholder activism in UK quoted companies continues to be an important and topical issue. The context of this research is the investment scene in the UK and within this context over the last two decades it is clear that considerable change has taken place. The research report covers a variety of topics and provides an overview of some of the positive and negative implications of activism.

Webinars

ESG and stakeholder capitalism

The challenges and opportunities around purpose, stakeholder capitalism, ESG and COVID-19.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed by external guest speakers in interviews or other publications included on this website are, by their nature, those of the speaker. They are not necessarily fully endorsed by the ICAEW or purport to reflect the official policies and views of the ICAEW or its members.

Legal alert

Legal Alert is a monthly checklist from Atom Content Marketing highlighting new and pending laws, regulations, codes of practice and rulings that could have an impact on your business.

Case law: Unfairly prejudicial conduct at subsidiary level can result in successful claim by shareholder of parent company

Shareholders/directors in group situations should note that unfairly prejudicial conduct in relation to the affairs of a subsidiary company in a group may also amount to unfairly prejudicial conduct of the parent company’s affairs; and the subsidiary and parent may also be part of a quasi-partnership - widening the scope for an unfair prejudice claim.

Case law: Private company shareholder ‘written resolutions’ invalid unless circulated on the authority of the board

Companies proposing to use written resolutions to make shareholder decisions – ie, agreeing to a decision in writing rather than holding a formal meeting - should ensure every such resolution is approved and circulated by the board and sent on its behalf to all shareholders entitled to vote on the decision, otherwise it will be invalid - as a recent ruling makes clear.

Disclaimer: These publications from Atom Content Marketing are for general guidance only, for businesses in the United Kingdom governed by the laws of England. Atom Content Marketing, expert contributors and ICAEW (as distributor) disclaim all liability for any errors or omissions.

The Library & Information Service provides a collection of eBooks as a benefit of membership. Please note that ICSA publications are only available to ICAEW members and ACA students.  Please log in to access these titles. If you are unable to access an eBook, please see our Help and support or contact library@icaew.com.

Shareholder activism and investor relations

Chapter 5 discusses shareholder engagement, relations and communications, shareholder rights and meetings.

Corporate governance handbook

The ICSA Corporate Governance Handbook provides full explanations of the statutory and regulatory regime applicable to listed companies but also,addresses how governance best practice might be applied by private companies, including subsidiaries.

Corporate governance handbook

The Handbook provides full explanations of the statutory and regulatory regime applicable to listed companies but also, for the first time, addresses how governance best practice might be applied by private companies, including subsidiaries,

Terms of use: You are permitted to access, download, copy, or print out content from eBooks for your own research or study only, subject to the terms of use set by our suppliers and any restrictions imposed by individual publishers. Please see individual supplier pages for full terms of use.

The Library & Information Service provides a collection of articles as a benefit of membership. Please log in to view these articles. If you are unable to access the articles, please see our Help and support page or contact library@icaew.com.

Getting serious about ESG risks

The article offers information on the environmental, social and governance (ESG) approach of a company for risk management. Topics discussed include making adjustments to the risk management strategies for applying ESG approach; maintaining partnerships with senior executive leaders, finance, investor relations and corporate communications to assess and mitigate ESG risks.

Evolving investor relations

The article deals with the growing influence of passive investors which may prompt companies to develop a new approach to board governance and investor communications

When replacing an audit committee member, does financial expertise matter to investors?

The article reports on the study which reveals that financial expertise of audit committee member is important to investors. Topics mentioned include the importance of financial expertise on audit committees in the improvement of audit committee effectiveness in financial monitoring duties, the internal auditing management, and the role of audit committee to financial statements management. Also mentioned are the role of audit committee in decision-making and the financial reports quality.

Preparing for the 2018 US proxy and annual reporting season - are you ready?

Guidance for companies preparing for the 2018 US proxy and annual reporting season, which will be the first time that CEO pay ratio disclosure will be required.

Terms of use: You are permitted to access articles subject to the terms of use set by our suppliers and any restrictions imposed by individual publishers. Please see individual supplier pages for full terms of use.

Useful links

Review of the 2023 AGM season

Leading global proxy solicitor, shareholder engagement firm and corporate governance advisors Georgeson publish an annual review of trends from European AGMs covering the following jurisdictions: UK, France, the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Italy and Spain (a separate report is published on Denmark). Each countries entry is divided into three sections: voting; proxy advisers; corporate governance developments.

Corporate Governance Review

Grant Thornton's review of the annual reports of 297 of the UK’s FTSE 350 companies with years ending between April 2021 and June 2022. The section on stakeholder engagement looks at engagement with shareholders, employees, other non-executives and other stakeholders. Registration required for free download.

Good practice guidance for company meetings

FRC guidance for good practice that listed companies should consider adopting in order to enhance effective shareholder participation when planning and conducting annual general meetings (AGMs) and other general meetings.

Improving the quality of ‘comply or explain’ reporting

FRC document which is intended to help companies improve transparency when reporting against the 2018 UK Corporate Governance Code and advise them on how to achieve good quality explanations when departing from the Code.

ICAEW accepts no responsibility for the content on any site to which a hypertext link from this site exists. The links are provided ‘as is’ with no warranty, express or implied, for the information provided within them. Please see the full copyright and disclaimer notice.

* Some of the content on this web page was provided by the Chartered Accountants’ Trust for Education and Research, a registered charity, which owns the library and operates it for ICAEW.