Global Shareholder Stewardship: A Conference Report

Abstract

On 20-21 September 2019, the first Global Shareholder Stewardship conference took place at King’s College London. The conference was co-hosted by the Dickson Poon School Law, the Transnational Law Institute (King’s College London) and the European Corporate Governance Institute (ECGI) and funded by the Dickson Poon School of Law (King's College London), the Transnational Law Institute (King's College London), the British Academy's Partnership with the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, and the ESRC Social Science Impact Fund. The conference co-organisers Dr Dionysia Katelouzou (Dickson Poon School of Law, King’s College London) and Dr Dan Puchniak (Faculty of Law, National University of Singapore) gathered a collection of academics, policymakers and market players to share experiences, enhance dialogue, disseminate good practice, guide scholarship, and shape future stewardship policy through evidence-based recommendations.

This report provides a summary of the key findings of this conference. The overarching aim of the conference was to examine and compare national, supranational, and international stewardship principles, elaborate institutions’ investment practices, showcase the impact of soft and hard regulation on current and evolving stewardship practices and understand the interaction of private and public actors in generating public policy. The findings will, therefore, contribute to current corporate governance debates and policymaking at national, supranational and international levels and will inform a wide range of academic and non-academic beneficiaries, including institutional investors, companies, and other stakeholders.

Keywords: corporate governance, stewardship, institutional investors, conference report, sustainability