There is a growing band of corporate governance specialists offering their services as consultants and advisers to companies, trusts and public bodies. Such specialists have for several years issued state-of-health reports to companies on their governance performance. In July of this year, ratings giant Standard & Poor’s announced that it would issue separate assessments of companies’ corporate governance performance: Shell and ITV were the first companies to have these reports issued on their compliance and whistle-blowing procedures.
The latest development is one step further, however – the wholesale outsourcing of shareholder activism and monitoring of a company’s corporate governance obligations to independent specialists. Those doing the monitoring say in-house lawyers will be targeted as part of their work on behalf of trusts and pension funds; indeed, they say that they would like general counsel to adopt a high-profile presence when interviews are set up with a chief executive or company secretary.
