Investor Advisory Group named at UK’s FRC governance watchdog

Some of the leading figures in corporate governance in the UK have been named to a new Investor Advisory Group (IAG) formed by the Financial Reporting Council watchdog.

The FRC said it had a “fantastic response” to its call for nominations to the new body, which provides a forum for it to engage with representatives from the investment chain on issues such as strategy and new policies and standards on governance, stewardship, reporting and audit matters.

It comes as the FRC itself is under increasing scrutiny, with the government launching an independent review of the body earlier this month – with some calling for it to be disbanded over its involvement in the collapse of the outsourcing firm Carillion and other corporate scandals.

The FRC launched the call for applications to the new IAG in April, seeking representatives from asset managers, pension funds, sell-side analysts, ratings agencies, proxy advisors and sovereign wealth funds (see list of members below).

Separately, Chris Hodge, the FRC’s former Head of Corporate Governance, is to step down from his role as chair of the Best Practice Principles for Shareholder Voting, the European voting research industry body due to “increased work commitments”. According to his LinkedIn profile, Hodge has a variety of roles with ICSA, Nestor Advisors and Board Intelligence and others; he will leave at the end of the month having been in the role for just over a year and the BPP group says it is in the process of appointing a replacement. It comes as the BPP is working on an independent review of its Principles following a public consultation at the end of 2017. Hodge said in a statement that the scope of the project had become larger than originally expected.Members of new IAG:
Amra Balic, Managing Director, EMEA Investment Stewardship team, BlackRock
Andrew Cave, Head of Governance & Sustainability, Baillie Gifford
Ben Yeoh, Senior Portfolio Manager of Global Equities, Royal Bank of Canada Global Asset Management
Carine Smith Ihenacho, Chief Corporate Governance Officer, Norges Bank Investment Management
Daniel Summerfield, Co-Head of Responsible Investment, USS Investment Management
David Gorman, Head of Research, Castlefield Partners
Faith Ward, Chief Responsible Investment Officer, Brunel Pension Partnership
Janice Turner, Founding Co-Chair, Association of Member Nominated Trustees
Kazim Razvi, Director, Fitch Ratings
Laurie Fitzjohn-Sykes, Analyst, Environmental, Social and Governance Global Research, HSBC
Leon Kamhi, Head of Responsibility, Hermes Investment Management
Michael Marshall, Director of Responsible Investment & Engagement, LGPS Central Limited
Mohammed Amin, Representing UKSA and ShareSoc
Natasha Landell-Mills, Head of Stewardship, Sarasin & Partners
Nathan Leclercq, Head of U.K. Research, Institutional Shareholder Services
Paul Marsland, Senior Analyst, Kepler Cheuvreux
Simon Siu, Principal and Deputy Head of Finance, BT Pension Scheme